Unfortunately, your suggestion is not much safer. It will help only if the first field is the only one that is not of fixed length.
Either sort should work with tobyink's suggestion to replace the join with sprintf. You can think of the result as a number formed by multiplying each field by different power of ten and then adding them.
In reply to Re^5: Sorting files by 3 numbers in the name
by BillKSmith
in thread Sorting files by 3 numbers in the name
by crusty_collins
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