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Natural-order sort in JavaScript

In JavaScript on 4 January 2008 with 4 comments

For your delectation and amusement in this new year: the shortest (and possibly slowest…) natural-order sorting method I could come up with:

Array.prototype.naturalSort = function() {
  var p, q, valueOf = function(t) {
    return isNaN(t) ? t.charCodeAt(0) :
        Number(t) - Math.pow(2,32);
  };
  return this.sort(function(a,b) {
    var values = [a,b].map(function(s) {
      return s.toString().toLowerCase()
          .match(/([a-z]|[0-9]+(?:\.[0-9]+)?)/ig);
    });
    a = values[0]; b = values[1];
    for (var i = 0, n = Math.min(a.length, b.length); i < n; i++) {
      p = valueOf(a[i]), q = valueOf(b[i]);
      if (p != q) return p - q;
    }
    return a.length - b.length;
  });
};

I don’t know why, I just had to do this after finding a JS implementation via this article last year which was large, buggy, and littered with global variables…

Please don’t use this, it really is slow. Just an exercise in seeing how short a method I could write.

4 Comments