1Sort::Key::Natural(3) User Contributed Perl DocumentationSort::Key::Natural(3)
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NAME

6       Sort::Key::Natural - fast natural sorting
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SYNOPSIS

9           use Sort::Key::Natural qw(natsort);
10
11           my @data = qw(foo1 foo23 foo6 bar12 bar1
12                         foo bar2 bar-45 foomatic b-a-r-45);
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14           my @sorted = natsort @data;
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16           print "@sorted\n";
17           # prints:
18           #   b-a-r-45 bar1 bar2 bar12 bar-45 foo foo1 foo6 foo23 foomatic
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20           use Sort::Key::Natural qw(natkeysort);
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22           my @objects = (...);
23           my @sorted = natkeysort { $_->get_id } @objects;
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DESCRIPTION

26       This module extends the Sort::Key family of modules to support natural
27       sorting.
28
29       Under natural sorting, strings are splitted at word and number
30       boundaries, and the resulting substrings are compared as follows:
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32       ·   numeric substrings are compared numerically
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34       ·   alphabetic substrings are compared lexically
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36       ·   numeric substrings come always before alphabetic substrings
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38       Spaces, symbols and non-printable characters are only considered for
39       splitting the string into its parts but not for sorting. For instance
40       "foo-bar-42" is broken in three substrings "foo", "bar" and 42 and
41       after that the dashes are ignored.
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43       Also, once this module is loaded, the new type "natural" (or "nat")
44       will be available from Sort::Key::Maker. For instance:
45
46         use Sort::Key::Natural;
47         use Sort::Key::Maker i_rnat_keysort => qw(integer -natural);
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49       creates a multikey sorter "i_rnat_keysort" accepting two keys, the
50       first to be compared as an integer and the second in natural descending
51       order.
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53   FUNCTIONS
54       the functions that can be imported from this module are:
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56       natsort @data
57           returns the elements of @data sorted in natural order.
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59       rnatsort @data
60           returns the elements of @data sorted in natural descending order.
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62       natkeysort { CALC_KEY($_) } @data
63           returns the elements on @array naturally sorted by the keys
64           resulting from applying them "CALC_KEY".
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66       rnatkeysort { CALC_KEY($_) } @data
67           is similar to "natkeysort" but sorts the elements in descending
68           order.
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70       natsort_inplace @data
71       rnatsort_inplace @data
72       natkeysort_inplace { CALC_KEY($_) } @data
73       rnatkeysort_inplace { CALC_KEY($_) } @data
74           these functions are similar respectively to "natsort", "rnatsort",
75           "natsortkey" and "rnatsortkey", but they sort the array @data in
76           place.
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78       mkkey_natural $key
79           transforms key $key in a way that when sorted with Sort::Key
80           keysort results in a natural sort. If the argument $key is not
81           provided it defaults to $_
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SEE ALSO

84       Sort::Key, Sort::Key::Maker.
85
86       Other module providing similar functionality is Sort::Naturally.
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89       Copyright (C) 2006 by Salvador Fandin~o, <sfandino@yahoo.com>.
90
91       This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
92       under the same terms as Perl itself, either Perl version 5.8.4 or, at
93       your option, any later version of Perl 5 you may have available.
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97perl v5.12.0                      2006-05-08             Sort::Key::Natural(3)
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