oracular (3) Sort::Key::Natural.3pm.gz

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.

SEE ALSO

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

       Other module providing similar functionality is Sort::Naturally.

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE

       Copyright (C) 2006, 2012, 2014 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.