#!/usr/bin/perl use strict; use warnings; use Test::More tests => 6; sub natural_string_cmp { my ($left, $right) = @_; my @left = split /\b|(?<=[A-Za-z])(?=\d)|(?<=\d)(?=[A-Za-z])/, $left; my @right = split /\b|(?<=[A-Za-z])(?=\d)|(?<=\d)(?=[A-Za-z])/, $right; #use Data::Dumper; #warn Dumper \@left; #warn Dumper \@right; # Now, reconstruct a string for each item that can simply be compared directly. # For this, we zero-left-pad all numbers and extend all strings with \0 # For simplicity, I assume no number longer than 18 digits and no string longer than 10 characters my $l = join "", map { /\d/ ? sprintf '%018d', $_ : substr($_."\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0",0,10) } @left; my $r = join "", map { /\d/ ? sprintf '%018d', $_ : substr($_."\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0",0,10) } @right; #warn $l; #warn $r; return $l cmp $r } is natural_string_cmp('Rack1-Unit1', 'Rack1-Unit1'), 0, "Identity"; is natural_string_cmp('Rack1-Unit1', 'Rack1-Unit2'), -1, "Smaller"; is natural_string_cmp('Rack1-Unit2', 'Rack3-Unit1'), -1, "Smaller"; is natural_string_cmp('Rack3-Unit1', 'Rack1-Unit1'), 1, "Larger"; is natural_string_cmp('R1U1', 'R1U1'), 0, "Identity"; is natural_string_cmp('R1U2', 'R3U1'), -1, "Smaller"; is natural_string_cmp('R3U1', 'R10U1'), -1, "Smaller"; is natural_string_cmp('R10U1', 'R3U1'), 1, "Larger"; #R1-U1 #R1-U10 #R2-U2 #R3-U13 #R10-U1 #R10-U5 #R10-U11 #