Question

117

Sort Array Elements (string with numbers), natural sort

rated 0 times [ 119] [ 2] / answers: 1 / hits: 43278 / 11 Years ago, mon, march 18, 2013, 12:00:00

I have an array like;

[IL0 Foo, PI0 Bar, IL10 Baz, IL3 Bob says hello]

And need to sort it so it appears like;

[IL0 Foo, IL3 Bob says hello, IL10 Baz, PI0 Bar]

I have tried a sort function;

function compare(a,b) {

  if (a < b)

     return -1;

  if (a > b)

    return 1;

  return 0;

}

but this gives the order

[IL0 Foo, IL10 Baz, IL3 Bob says hello, PI0 Bar]

I have tried to think of a regex that will work but can't get my head around it.

If it helps the format will always be 2 letters, x amount of numbers, then any number of characters.

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desiraeleandrah

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answered 11 Years ago kalias · Accepted Answer

This is called natural sort and can be implemented in JS like this:

function naturalCompare(a, b) {

    var ax = [], bx = [];



    a.replace(/(d+)|(D+)/g, function(_, $1, $2) { ax.push([$1 || Infinity, $2 || ]) });

    b.replace(/(d+)|(D+)/g, function(_, $1, $2) { bx.push([$1 || Infinity, $2 || ]) });

    

    while(ax.length && bx.length) {

        var an = ax.shift();

        var bn = bx.shift();

        var nn = (an[0] - bn[0]) || an[1].localeCompare(bn[1]);

        if(nn) return nn;

    }



    return ax.length - bx.length;

}



/////////////////////////



test = [

    img12.png,

    img10.png,

    img2.png,

    img1.png,

    img101.png,

    img101a.png,

    abc10.jpg,

    abc10,

    abc2.jpg,

    20.jpg,

    20,

    abc,

    abc2,

    

];



test.sort(naturalCompare)

document.write(<pre> + JSON.stringify(test,0,3));

To sort in reverse order, just swap the arguments:

test.sort(function(a, b) { return naturalCompare(b, a) })

or simply

test = test.sort(naturalCompare).reverse();