Sort::Key::Natural - fast natural sorting

    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;

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

Under natural sorting, strings are splitted 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.

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.

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.

mkkey_natural $key

transforms key $key in a way that when sorted with Sort::Key keysort results in a natural sort. If the argument $key is not provided it defaults to $_

Sort::Key, Sort::Key::Maker.

Other module providing similar functionality is Sort::Naturally.

Copyright (C) 2006 by Salvador Fandiño, <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.