I have a little utility module I use when I get annoyed by the default ASCII sort. Here it is: 

package SortCustom;

my @d_ord = sort (map{ chr($_) } (0..255));
my %d_map = map { $d_ord[$_] => $_ } (0..$#d_ord);

sub csort {
    my ($A,$B) = @_;
    my $res = 0;
      my $ndx = 0;
    
    while ($ndx < length($A)) {
        if (length($B) < $ndx) { $res = 1; last; }
        my ($cA, $cB) = ( substr($A,$ndx,1) , substr($B,$ndx,1) );
        
        $res = ($d_map{$cA} <=> $d_map{$cB});
        last if $res != 0;
    }
    continue {
        $ndx++;
    }
    
    return $res;
}

sub set_order {
    my $key = \@_;
    my @val = sort map { $d_map{$_} } @$key;
    
    my ($low, $hi) = ($val[0], $val[-1]);
    
    for (@$key) { $d_map{$_} = undef }
    undef @d_ord;
    
    for ( sort { $d_map{$a} <=> $d_map{$b} } keys %d_map ) {
        next unless defined $d_map{$_};
        if ( @d_ord < $low || !defined $key ) {
            push @d_ord, $_;
        }
        else {
            push @d_ord, @$key;
            $key = undef;
        }
    }
    
    %d_map = map { $d_ord[$_] => $_ } (0..$#d_ord);
}

1;

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This allows you to specify a subset of the default sorting order to "fix" for your own purposes. This particular example (sort + before -) could be "repaired" by: 

SortCustom::set_order('+','-');
@set = sort { csort($a,$b) } @set;

[download]

The side-effects when making modifcations can be truly odd if you don't think carefully, so take care if using this module in production code. Here's a script that illustrates some of the ways I commonly use this utility: 

use strict;
use warnings;
use List::Util 'shuffle';

use SortCustom;
SortCustom::set_order( '-','+', map { $_, lc $_ } ('A'..'Z') );

my @values = shuffle( ('a'..'z','A'..'Z','+','-') );
my @nsort = sort @values;
my @csort = sort { SortCustom::csort($a,$b) } @values;

for (0..$#values) { printf "%s : %s\n", $nsort[$_], $csort[$_] }

[download]
<-radiant.matrix->
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I haven't found a problem yet that can't be solved by a well-placed trebuchet

In reply to Re: ASCII Woe by radiantmatrix
in thread ASCII Woe by QM

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