In computing, natural sort order (or natural sorting) is the
ordering of strings in
alphabetical order
Alphabetical order is a system whereby character strings are placed in order based on the position of the characters in the conventional ordering of an alphabet. It is one of the methods of collation. In mathematics, a lexicographical order is t ...
, except that multi-digit numbers are treated atomically, i.e., as if they were a single character. Natural sort order has been promoted as being more human-friendly ("natural") than machine-oriented, pure alphabetical sort order.
For example, in alphabetical sorting, "z11" would be sorted before "z2" because the "1" in the first
string is sorted as smaller than "2", while in natural sorting "z2" is sorted before "z11" because "2" is treated as smaller than "11".
Alphabetical sorting:
# z11
# z2
Natural sorting:
# z2
# z11
Functionality to sort by natural sort order is now widely available in software libraries for many programming languages. During the 1996
MacHack
MacHack was a Macintosh software developers conference first held in 1986 in Ann Arbor, Michigan in partnership with the University of Michigan. The conference was organized and operated by Expotech, Inc. The final (18th) MacHack conference took ...
conference, the Natural Order
Mac OS
Two major famlies of Mac operating systems were developed by Apple Inc.
In 1984, Apple debuted the operating system that is now known as the "Classic" Mac OS with its release of the original Macintosh System Software. The system, rebranded "M ...
System Extension was conceived and implemented overnight on-site as an entry for the Best Hack contest. Dave Koelle wrote the Alphanum Algorithm in 1997 and Martin Pool published Natural Order String Comparison in 2000.
References
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Collation