Natural Sort Order in C#

Question

Anyone have a good resource or provide a sample of a natural order sort in C# for an FileInfo array? I am implementing the IComparer interface in my sorts.

Answer 1

Matthews Horsleys answer is the fastest method which doesn't change behaviour depending on which version of windows your program is running on. However, it can be even faster by creating the regex once, and using RegexOptions.Compiled. I also added the option of inserting a string comparer so you can ignore case if needed, and improved readability a bit.

    public static IEnumerable<T> OrderByNatural<T>(this IEnumerable<T> items, Func<T, string> selector, StringComparer stringComparer = null)
    {
        var regex = new Regex(@"\d+", RegexOptions.Compiled);

        int maxDigits = items
                      .SelectMany(i => regex.Matches(selector(i)).Cast<Match>().Select(digitChunk => (int?)digitChunk.Value.Length))
                      .Max() ?? 0;

        return items.OrderBy(i => regex.Replace(selector(i), match => match.Value.PadLeft(maxDigits, '0')), stringComparer ?? StringComparer.CurrentCulture);
    }

Use by

var sortedEmployees = employees.OrderByNatural(emp => emp.Name);

This takes 450ms to sort 100,000 strings compared to 300ms for the default .net string comparison - pretty fast!

Answer 2

Here's a relatively simple example that doesn't use P/Invoke and avoids any allocation during execution.

internal sealed class NumericStringComparer : IComparer<string>
{
    public static NumericStringComparer Instance { get; } = new NumericStringComparer();

    public int Compare(string x, string y)
    {
        // sort nulls to the start
        if (x == null)
            return y == null ? 0 : -1;
        if (y == null)
            return 1;

        var ix = 0;
        var iy = 0;

        while (true)
        {
            // sort shorter strings to the start
            if (ix >= x.Length)
                return iy >= y.Length ? 0 : -1;
            if (iy >= y.Length)
                return 1;

            var cx = x[ix];
            var cy = y[iy];

            int result;
            if (char.IsDigit(cx) && char.IsDigit(cy))
                result = CompareInteger(x, y, ref ix, ref iy);
            else
                result = cx.CompareTo(y[iy]);

            if (result != 0)
                return result;

            ix++;
            iy++;
        }
    }

    private static int CompareInteger(string x, string y, ref int ix, ref int iy)
    {
        var lx = GetNumLength(x, ix);
        var ly = GetNumLength(y, iy);

        // shorter number first (note, doesn't handle leading zeroes)
        if (lx != ly)
            return lx.CompareTo(ly);

        for (var i = 0; i < lx; i++)
        {
            var result = x[ix++].CompareTo(y[iy++]);
            if (result != 0)
                return result;
        }

        return 0;
    }

    private static int GetNumLength(string s, int i)
    {
        var length = 0;
        while (i < s.Length && char.IsDigit(s[i++]))
            length++;
        return length;
    }
}

It doesn't ignore leading zeroes, so 01 comes after 2.

Corresponding unit test:

public class NumericStringComparerTests
{
    [Fact]
    public void OrdersCorrectly()
    {
        AssertEqual("", "");
        AssertEqual(null, null);
        AssertEqual("Hello", "Hello");
        AssertEqual("Hello123", "Hello123");
        AssertEqual("123", "123");
        AssertEqual("123Hello", "123Hello");

        AssertOrdered("", "Hello");
        AssertOrdered(null, "Hello");
        AssertOrdered("Hello", "Hello1");
        AssertOrdered("Hello123", "Hello124");
        AssertOrdered("Hello123", "Hello133");
        AssertOrdered("Hello123", "Hello223");
        AssertOrdered("123", "124");
        AssertOrdered("123", "133");
        AssertOrdered("123", "223");
        AssertOrdered("123", "1234");
        AssertOrdered("123", "2345");
        AssertOrdered("0", "1");
        AssertOrdered("123Hello", "124Hello");
        AssertOrdered("123Hello", "133Hello");
        AssertOrdered("123Hello", "223Hello");
        AssertOrdered("123Hello", "1234Hello");
    }

    private static void AssertEqual(string x, string y)
    {
        Assert.Equal(0, NumericStringComparer.Instance.Compare(x, y));
        Assert.Equal(0, NumericStringComparer.Instance.Compare(y, x));
    }

    private static void AssertOrdered(string x, string y)
    {
        Assert.Equal(-1, NumericStringComparer.Instance.Compare(x, y));
        Assert.Equal( 1, NumericStringComparer.Instance.Compare(y, x));
    }
}

Answer 3

You do need to be careful -- I vaguely recall reading that StrCmpLogicalW, or something like it, was not strictly transitive, and I have observed .NET's sort methods to sometimes get stuck in infinite loops if the comparison function breaks that rule.

A transitive comparison will always report that a < c if a < b and b < c. There exists a function that does a natural sort order comparison that does not always meet that criterion, but I can't recall whether it is StrCmpLogicalW or something else.

Answer 4

My solution:

void Main()
{
    new[] {"a4","a3","a2","a10","b5","b4","b400","1","C1d","c1d2"}.OrderBy(x => x, new NaturalStringComparer()).Dump();
}

public class NaturalStringComparer : IComparer<string>
{
    private static readonly Regex _re = new Regex(@"(?<=\D)(?=\d)|(?<=\d)(?=\D)", RegexOptions.Compiled);

    public int Compare(string x, string y)
    {
        x = x.ToLower();
        y = y.ToLower();
        if(string.Compare(x, 0, y, 0, Math.Min(x.Length, y.Length)) == 0)
        {
            if(x.Length == y.Length) return 0;
            return x.Length < y.Length ? -1 : 1;
        }
        var a = _re.Split(x);
        var b = _re.Split(y);
        int i = 0;
        while(true)
        {
            int r = PartCompare(a[i], b[i]);
            if(r != 0) return r;
            ++i;
        }
    }

    private static int PartCompare(string x, string y)
    {
        int a, b;
        if(int.TryParse(x, out a) && int.TryParse(y, out b))
            return a.CompareTo(b);
        return x.CompareTo(y);
    }
}

Results:

1
a2
a3
a4
a10
b4
b5
b400
C1d
c1d2

Answer 5

Expanding on a couple of the previous answers and making use of extension methods, I came up with the following that doesn't have the caveats of potential multiple enumerable enumeration, or performance issues concerned with using multiple regex objects, or calling regex needlessly, that being said, it does use ToList(), which can negate the benefits in larger collections.

The selector supports generic typing to allow any delegate to be assigned, the elements in the source collection are mutated by the selector, then converted to strings with ToString().

    private static readonly Regex _NaturalOrderExpr = new Regex(@"\d+", RegexOptions.Compiled);

    public static IEnumerable<TSource> OrderByNatural<TSource, TKey>(
        this IEnumerable<TSource> source, Func<TSource, TKey> selector)
    {
        int max = 0;

        var selection = source.Select(
            o =>
            {
                var v = selector(o);
                var s = v != null ? v.ToString() : String.Empty;

                if (!String.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(s))
                {
                    var mc = _NaturalOrderExpr.Matches(s);

                    if (mc.Count > 0)
                    {
                        max = Math.Max(max, mc.Cast<Match>().Max(m => m.Value.Length));
                    }
                }

                return new
                {
                    Key = o,
                    Value = s
                };
            }).ToList();

        return
            selection.OrderBy(
                o =>
                String.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(o.Value) ? o.Value : _NaturalOrderExpr.Replace(o.Value, m => m.Value.PadLeft(max, '0')))
                     .Select(o => o.Key);
    }

    public static IEnumerable<TSource> OrderByDescendingNatural<TSource, TKey>(
        this IEnumerable<TSource> source, Func<TSource, TKey> selector)
    {
        int max = 0;

        var selection = source.Select(
            o =>
            {
                var v = selector(o);
                var s = v != null ? v.ToString() : String.Empty;

                if (!String.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(s))
                {
                    var mc = _NaturalOrderExpr.Matches(s);

                    if (mc.Count > 0)
                    {
                        max = Math.Max(max, mc.Cast<Match>().Max(m => m.Value.Length));
                    }
                }

                return new
                {
                    Key = o,
                    Value = s
                };
            }).ToList();

        return
            selection.OrderByDescending(
                o =>
                String.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(o.Value) ? o.Value : _NaturalOrderExpr.Replace(o.Value, m => m.Value.PadLeft(max, '0')))
                     .Select(o => o.Key);
    }

Answer 6

Pure C# solution for linq orderby:

http://zootfroot.blogspot.com/2009/09/natural-sort-compare-with-linq-orderby.html

public class NaturalSortComparer<T> : IComparer<string>, IDisposable
{
    private bool isAscending;

    public NaturalSortComparer(bool inAscendingOrder = true)
    {
        this.isAscending = inAscendingOrder;
    }

    #region IComparer<string> Members

    public int Compare(string x, string y)
    {
        throw new NotImplementedException();
    }

    #endregion

    #region IComparer<string> Members

    int IComparer<string>.Compare(string x, string y)
    {
        if (x == y)
            return 0;

        string[] x1, y1;

        if (!table.TryGetValue(x, out x1))
        {
            x1 = Regex.Split(x.Replace(" ", ""), "([0-9]+)");
            table.Add(x, x1);
        }

        if (!table.TryGetValue(y, out y1))
        {
            y1 = Regex.Split(y.Replace(" ", ""), "([0-9]+)");
            table.Add(y, y1);
        }

        int returnVal;

        for (int i = 0; i < x1.Length && i < y1.Length; i++)
        {
            if (x1[i] != y1[i])
            {
                returnVal = PartCompare(x1[i], y1[i]);
                return isAscending ? returnVal : -returnVal;
            }
        }

        if (y1.Length > x1.Length)
        {
            returnVal = 1;
        }
        else if (x1.Length > y1.Length)
        { 
            returnVal = -1; 
        }
        else
        {
            returnVal = 0;
        }

        return isAscending ? returnVal : -returnVal;
    }

    private static int PartCompare(string left, string right)
    {
        int x, y;
        if (!int.TryParse(left, out x))
            return left.CompareTo(right);

        if (!int.TryParse(right, out y))
            return left.CompareTo(right);

        return x.CompareTo(y);
    }

    #endregion

    private Dictionary<string, string[]> table = new Dictionary<string, string[]>();

    public void Dispose()
    {
        table.Clear();
        table = null;
    }
}