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The Flattening Internet Topology: Natural Evolution, Unsightly Barnacles or Contrived
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Sort::Key::Natural(3pm) User Contributed Perl Documentation Sort::Key::Natural(3pm) 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 "; # 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: o numeric substrings are compared numerically o alphabetic substrings are compared lexically o 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. perl v5.14.2 2012-06-30 Sort::Key::Natural(3pm)
