in reply to Comparison of alphanumeric strings

How do you want them ordered?

The string lt operator simply isn't going to work. sort expects an expression that returns one of three values: less than 0 iff lhs less than rhs, 0 iff lhs equals rhs, and greater than 0 iff lhs greater than rhs. The cmp operator performs that operation for strings and <=> (the spaceship operator) does it for numerical values.

If you want some other comparison you need to roll up your own expression that generates -1, 0 or 1 as appropriate for combinations of lhs and rhs values, but you need to specify the desired sort order before you can code it!

True laziness is hard work

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Re^2: Comparison of alphanumeric strings
by Anonymous Monk on Sep 17, 2009 at 10:45 UTC
    I want to order them in ascending order depending on the numbers first, then strings and then alphanumeric
[reply]

      In that case you really need two sort criteria - type of string and actual string. Consider:

      use warnings;
use strict;

my $column=2;
my @sort_col;
my @lines;

while(<DATA>) {
    my @F=split(/\|/,$_);
    push @sort_col, $F[$column];
    push @lines, "$_";
}

@sort_col = map {[$_ => /^\d+$/ ? 0 : /^\D+$/ ? 1 : 2]} @sort_col;

my @sortedOrder =
    sort {$sort_col[$a][1] cmp $sort_col[$b][1] or $sort_col[$a][0] cm
+p $sort_col[$b][0]}
    0 .. $#sort_col;

print @lines[@sortedOrder];

__DATA__
D|0|95465tan|2|4|4|14028.77|0.00|BF2-002|22/09/2009|07/01/2009|06/09/2
+009|45544564|
D|0|954564545|1|4|abar_BF4|4|3913.17|0.00|accabar_BF4-003|22/09/2009|0
+7/02/2009|06/09/2009|10254754|
D|0|a454654|1|4|ar_BF4|4|3913.17|0.00|acctrabar_BF4-003|22/09/2009|07/
+02/2009|06/09/2009|11122323|
D|0|Chking|1|4|arabar_BF4|4|3913.17|0.00|acarabar_BF4-003|22/09/2009|0
+7/02/2009|06/09/2009|11122323|

      [download]

      Prints:

      D|0|954564545|1|4|abar_BF4|4|3913.17|0.00|accabar_BF4-003|22/09/2009|0
+7/02/2009|06/09/2009|10254754|
D|0|Chking|1|4|arabar_BF4|4|3913.17|0.00|acarabar_BF4-003|22/09/2009|0
+7/02/2009|06/09/2009|11122323|
D|0|95465tan|2|4|4|14028.77|0.00|BF2-002|22/09/2009|07/01/2009|06/09/2
+009|45544564|
D|0|a454654|1|4|ar_BF4|4|3913.17|0.00|acctrabar_BF4-003|22/09/2009|07/
+02/2009|06/09/2009|11122323|

      [download]
      True laziness is hard work
[reply]
[d/l]
[select]
        Grandfather, thanks for the reply. but one problem is that if the input is like given below it inserts a space between the lines: 
        D|06/09/2009|1454|
D|06/09/2009|2123cus|
D|06/09/2009|4123|
D|06/09/2009|aus|
D|06/09/2009|aaus12321|

        [download]
        :(
[reply]
[d/l]
        Grandfather, that worked perfectly thanks a lottt
[reply]

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