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 $_ } @data
Also, once this module is loaded, the new type "natural" (or
"nat") will be available from Sort::Key::Maker. For instance:
use Sort::Key::Natural;
use Sort::Key::Maker i_rnat_keysort => qw(integer -natural);
creates a multikey sorter "i_rnat_keysort" accepting two keys, the
first to be compared as an integer and the second in natural descending order.
There is also an alternative set of natural sorting functions that recognize
floating point numbers. They use the key type "natwf" (abreviation
of "natural_with_floats").
FUNCTIONS¶
the functions that can be imported from this module are:
- natsort @data
- returns the elements of @data sorted in natural order.
- rnatsort @data
- returns the elements of @data sorted in natural descending
order.
- natkeysort { CALC_KEY($_) } @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 $_.
- natwfsort @data
- rnatwfsort @data
- natkeywfsort { CALC_KEY($_) } @data
- rnatkeywfsort { CALC_KEY($_) } @data
- natwfsort_inplace @data
- rnatwfsort_inplace @data
- natkeywfsort_inplace { CALC_KEY($_) } @data
- rnatkeywfsort_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 embeded 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.
SEE ALSO¶
Sort::Key, Sort::Key::Maker.
Other module providing similar functionality is Sort::Naturally.
COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE¶
Copyright (C) 2006, 2012 by Salvador Fandin~o, <sfandino@yahoo.com>.
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.