Re: Re: Sorting Files with Numbers

I'm guessing that 'file' was just an example of a name that the orginal poster was using. It isn't very likely that the filenames will be exactly 4 chars long followed by a number. This will probably work better (untested):

sub file_sort 
{
    $a =~ /(\d*)$/;
    my $a_num = $1;
    $b =~ /(\d*)$/;
    my $b_num = $1;

    $a_num <=> $b_num;
}

foreach my $file (sort &file_sort keys %hash) {
    print "$key \n";
}
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Re: Re: Re: Sorting Files with Numbers by dmmiller2k (Chaplain) on Dec 31, 2002 at 15:08 UTC
Your solution fails to sort by the alpha prefix first. See dragonchild's answer, above, which groups files first by their alpha prefix, then numerically by suffix. Update: jdporter's solution (here) might be even more efficient with this dataset, since it uses `\D+` (non-digits) rather than `\w+` (word characters) to match the prefix, but it will also match punctuation and other non-alpha characters (which may not be what you want).	[reply] [d/l] [select]

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Re: Re: Re: Sorting Files with Numbers
by dmmiller2k (Chaplain) on Dec 31, 2002 at 15:08 UTC

Your solution fails to sort by the alpha prefix first. See dragonchild's answer, above, which groups files first by their alpha prefix, then numerically by suffix.

Update: jdporter's solution (here) might be even more efficient with this dataset, since it uses \D+ (non-digits) rather than \w+ (word characters) to match the prefix, but it will also match punctuation and other non-alpha characters (which may not be what you want).

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