How to implement a natural sort algorithm in c++?

Question

I\'m sorting strings that are comprised of text and numbers. I want the sort to sort the number parts as numbers, not alphanumeric.

For example I want: abc1def, ...

Answer 1

Partially reposting my another answer:

bool compareNat(const std::string& a, const std::string& b){
    if (a.empty())
        return true;
    if (b.empty())
        return false;
    if (std::isdigit(a[0]) && !std::isdigit(b[0]))
        return true;
    if (!std::isdigit(a[0]) && std::isdigit(b[0]))
        return false;
    if (!std::isdigit(a[0]) && !std::isdigit(b[0]))
    {
        if (a[0] == b[0])
            return compareNat(a.substr(1), b.substr(1));
        return (toUpper(a) < toUpper(b));
        //toUpper() is a function to convert a std::string to uppercase.
    }

    // Both strings begin with digit --> parse both numbers
    std::istringstream issa(a);
    std::istringstream issb(b);
    int ia, ib;
    issa >> ia;
    issb >> ib;
    if (ia != ib)
        return ia < ib;

    // Numbers are the same --> remove numbers and recurse
    std::string anew, bnew;
    std::getline(issa, anew);
    std::getline(issb, bnew);
    return (compareNat(anew, bnew));
}

toUpper() function:

std::string toUpper(std::string s){
    for(int i=0;i<(int)s.length();i++){s[i]=toupper(s[i]);}
    return s;
    }

Usage:

std::vector str;
str.push_back("abc1def");
str.push_back("abc10def");
...
std::sort(str.begin(), str.end(), compareNat);