Sort::Key::Natural - fast natural sorting

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 the Sort::Key manpage 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:

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 the Sort::Key::Maker manpage. 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.

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.

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

SEE ALSO

the Sort::Key manpage, the Sort::Key::Maker manpage.

Other module providing similar functionality is the Sort::Naturally manpage.

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE

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.

 Sort::Key::Natural - fast natural sorting