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

Answer 1

This is my code to sort a string having both alpha and numeric characters.

First, this extension method:

public static IEnumerable AlphanumericSort(this IEnumerable me)
{
    return me.OrderBy(x => Regex.Replace(x, @"\d+", m => m.Value.PadLeft(50, '0')));
}

Then, simply use it anywhere in your code like this:

List test = new List() { "The 1st", "The 12th", "The 2nd" };
test = test.AlphanumericSort();

How does it works ? By replaceing with zeros:

  Original  | Regex Replace |      The      |   Returned
    List    | Apply PadLeft |    Sorting    |     List
            |               |               |
 "The 1st"  |  "The 001st"  |  "The 001st"  |  "The 1st"
 "The 12th" |  "The 012th"  |  "The 002nd"  |  "The 2nd"
 "The 2nd"  |  "The 002nd"  |  "The 012th"  |  "The 12th"

Works with multiples numbers:

 Alphabetical Sorting | Alphanumeric Sorting
                      |
 "Page 21, Line 42"   | "Page 3, Line 7"
 "Page 21, Line 5"    | "Page 3, Line 32"
 "Page 3, Line 32"    | "Page 21, Line 5"
 "Page 3, Line 7"     | "Page 21, Line 42"

Hope that's will help.