Powershell Sort-Object Name with numbers doesn't properly

Question

I am trying to find .sql files in a folder and filtering them based on the last write time. Based on the last write time I got 4 files as output.

TestScript1         


        

Answer 1

Hm... finally figure it out.

Windows explorer is using a legacy API in shlwapi.dll called StrCmpLogicalW when sorting strings.

I don't want to use padding zeros, so wrote a script.

https://github.com/LarrysGIT/Powershell-Natural-sort

Find the following powershell script, it using the same API. You may need to check the latest code from the repo as I am not updating here always.

function Sort-Naturally
{
    PARAM(
        [System.Collections.ArrayList]$Array,
        [switch]$Descending
    )

    Add-Type -TypeDefinition @'
using System;
using System.Collections;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Runtime.InteropServices;
namespace NaturalSort {
    public static class NaturalSort
    {
        [DllImport("shlwapi.dll", CharSet = CharSet.Unicode)]
        public static extern int StrCmpLogicalW(string psz1, string psz2);
        public static System.Collections.ArrayList Sort(System.Collections.ArrayList foo)
        {
            foo.Sort(new NaturalStringComparer());
            return foo;
        }
    }
    public class NaturalStringComparer : IComparer
    {
        public int Compare(object x, object y)
        {
            return NaturalSort.StrCmpLogicalW(x.ToString(), y.ToString());
        }
    }
}
'@
    $Array.Sort((New-Object NaturalSort.NaturalStringComparer))
    if($Descending)
    {
        $Array.Reverse()
    }
    return $Array
}

Find the test results below.

PS> # Natural sort
PS> . .\NaturalSort.ps1
PS> Sort-Naturally -Array @('2', '1', '11')
1
2
11
PS> # If regular sort is used
PS> @('2', '1', '11') | Sort-Object
1
11
2

And,

PS> # Not good
PS> $t = (ls .\Scripts*.txt).name
PS> $t | Sort-Object
Scripts1.txt
Scripts10.txt
Scripts2.txt
PS> # Good
PS> Sort-Naturally -Array $t
Scripts1.txt
Scripts2.txt
Scripts10.txt