Sort::Key::Natural

Section: User Contributed Perl Documentation (3)
Updated: 2021-01-27
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NAME

Sort::Key::Natural - fast natural sorting

SYNOPSIS

    use Sort::Key::Natural qw(natsort);

    my @data = qw(foo1 foo23 foo6 bar12 bar1
                  foo bar2 bar-45 foomatic b-a-r-45);

    my @sorted = natsort @data;

    print "@sorted\n";
    # prints:
    #   b-a-r-45 bar1 bar2 bar12 bar-45 foo foo1 foo6 foo23 foomatic

    use Sort::Key::Natural qw(natkeysort);

    my @objects = (...);
    my @sorted = natkeysort { $_->get_id } @objects;

DESCRIPTION

This module extends the Sort::Key family of modules to support natural sorting.

Under natural sorting, strings are split at word and number boundaries, and the resulting substrings are compared as follows:

•: numeric substrings are compared numerically
•: alphabetic substrings are compared lexically
•: numeric substrings come always before alphabetic substrings

Spaces, symbols and non-printable characters are only considered for splitting the string into its parts but not for sorting. For instance "foo-bar-42" is broken in three substrings "foo", "bar" and 42 and after that the dashes are ignored.

Note, that the sorting is case sensitive. To do a case insensitive sort you have to convert the keys explicitly:

  my @sorted = natkeysort { lc $_ } @data

Also, once this module is loaded, the new type "natural" (or "nat") will be available from Sort::Key::Maker. For instance:

  use Sort::Key::Natural;
  use Sort::Key::Maker i_rnat_keysort => qw(integer -natural);

creates a multi-key sorter "i_rnat_keysort" accepting two keys, the first to be compared as an integer and the second in natural descending order.

There is also an alternative set of natural sorting functions that recognize floating point numbers. They use the key type "natwf" (abbreviation of "natural_with_floats").

FUNCTIONS

the functions that can be imported from this module are:

natsort @data

returns the elements of @data sorted in natural order.

rnatsort @data

returns the elements of @data sorted in natural descending order.

natkeysort { CALC_KEY($_) } @data

returns the elements on @array naturally sorted by the keys resulting from applying them "CALC_KEY".

rnatkeysort { CALC_KEY($_) } @data

is similar to "natkeysort" but sorts the elements in descending order.

natsort_inplace @data

rnatsort_inplace @data

natkeysort_inplace { CALC_KEY($_) } @data

rnatkeysort_inplace { CALC_KEY($_) } @data

these functions are similar respectively to "natsort", "rnatsort", "natsortkey" and "rnatsortkey", but they sort the array @data in place.

$key = mkkey_natural $string

given $string, returns a key that can be compared lexicographically to another key obtained in the same manner, results in the same order as comparing the former strings as in the natural order.

If the argument $key is not provided it defaults to $_.

natwfsort @data

rnatwfsort @data

natwfkeysort { CALC_KEY($_) } @data

rnatwfkeysort { CALC_KEY($_) } @data

natwfsort_inplace @data

rnatwfsort_inplace @data

natwfkeysort_inplace { CALC_KEY($_) } @data

rnatwfkeysort_inplace { CALC_KEY($_) } @data

mkkey_natural_with_floats $key

this ugly named set of functions perform in the same way as its s/natwf/nat/ counterpart with the difference that they honor floating point numbers embedded inside the strings.

In this context a floating point number is a string matching the regular expression "/[+\-]?\d+(\.\d*)?/". Note that numbers with an exponent part (i.e. "1.12E-12") are not recognized as such.

Note also that numbers without an integer part (i.e. .2 or "-.12") are not supported either.

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE

This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself, either Perl version 5.8.4 or, at your option, any later version of Perl 5 you may have available.