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Editor's Note: This file was selected as MATLAB Central Pick of the Week
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'}
Cite As
Douglas Schwarz (2026). sort_nat: Natural Order Sort (https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/10959-sort_nat-natural-order-sort), MATLAB Central File Exchange. Retrieved .
Acknowledgements
Inspired: BiofilmQ, Depth of field calculator based on 2D digital image correlation data, Customizable Natural-Order Sort, philipptempel/matlab-projectmanagement, Natural-Order Row Sort, Natural-Order Filename Sort, Lilo : Fast and pixel-accurate stitching for 2D tiles, KANTOO, DETEQT
General Information
- Version 1.3.0.0 (2.26 KB)
MATLAB Release Compatibility
- Compatible with any release
Platform Compatibility
- Windows
- macOS
- Linux
| Version | Published | Release Notes | Action |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1.3.0.0 | Fixed bug identified by Evgeny Pr. (Thanks!) |
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| 1.2.0.0 | Added ability to sort in descending order. |
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| 1.1.0.0 | Steve Herman identified an obscure bug (sorting a cell array of one string which has no numeric characters) which has now been fixed. Thank you Steve! |
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| 1.0.0.0 | Fixed ambiguity of sort order in certain cases e.g., {'a0','a00'}. Increased speed. Relaxed MATLAB version requirements -- no longer requires R2006a, should work with much older versions now. |
