sort_nat: Natural Order Sort

Sort strings in natural order.

Description

Natural order sorting sorts strings containing digits in a way such that the numerical value of the digits is taken into account. It is especially useful for sorting file names containing index numbers with different numbers of digits. Often, people will use leading zeros to get the right sort order, but with this function you don't have to do that. For example, with input of

{'file1.txt','file2.txt','file10.txt'}

a normal sort will give you

{'file1.txt','file10.txt','file2.txt'}

whereas, sort_nat will give you

{'file1.txt','file2.txt','file10.txt'}

• MATLAB release: MATLAB 7.0.4 (R14SP2)

[Mike Palumbo]

Great, much better than another file on the exchange "sortn", sortn froze when trying to sort over 6000 strings, this sort did it just fine in about a second.

[F Moisy]

Perfect. Should be included in R2007a!

[Hans van Dijk]

Great, just what I needed.

[Gang Xu]

Nice! Thanks

[Nikola Toljic]

Thanks

[Greg Fichter]

Nifty, thanks.

[Adam Baker]

I wish I'd found this sooner!