How can I sort a string both alphabetically and numerically?

I'm using a list box that displays the names of the shapes I am storing in a shapefile. I'm using the sort function to list them alphabetically. This works great, but when I get to something above 9 it doesn't work quite the way I want it to. For example, my list box looks something like this:

Circle 1

Circle 10

Circle 11

Circle 12

Circle 13

Circle 2

Circle 3

Circle 4

Circle 5

Circle 6

Circle 7

Circle 8

Circle 9

Ellipse 1

Ellipse 2

Rectangle 1

.

.

.

I'd like some way to make it so that the Circles above 9 follow after the 9 instead of the 1.

[Oleg Komarov]

One general approach is to pad with zeros:

Circle 01
Circle 02
...
Circle 10

Now if you have hundreds, then

Circle 001
...

[Jan]

Oleg, that's true. The leading zeros let the numerical order be the same as the alphabetical order.

Answer 1

[Teja Muppirala]

Very ugly, but works:

UnsortedText = {'BBB 1'; 'AAA 10'; 'AAA 9'; 'AAA 1'; 'BBB 2'; 'BBB 19'; 'BBB 9'; 'CCC 0'; 'CCC 9' ;'CCC 80'; 'CCC 7'};

R = cell2mat(regexp(UnsortedText ,'(?<Name>\D+)(?<Nums>\d+)','names'));
tmp = sortrows([{R.Name}' num2cell(cellfun(@(x)str2double(x),{R.Nums}'))]);

SortedText = strcat(tmp(:,1) ,cellfun(@(x) num2str(x), tmp(:,2),'unif',0))

There's got to be a simpler way to do this...

[Plamen Nikolov]

+1

[Stephen23]

"There's got to be a simpler way to do this..."

https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/34464-customizable-natural-order-sort

Answer 2

[Ryan]

FEX Submission "ASORT: A Pedestrian Alphanumeric String Sorter" works somewhat. I was able to sort something such as:

 A = {'A 1', 'A 9', 'A 10', 'A 5'}; % In the order you asked for

But something such as:

 A = {'A 1', 'B 10', 'A 4', 'B 2'};

Resulted in:

 ans = A 1, B 2, A 4, B 10

There may be a better alphanumeric string sorter in the FEX that I missed in my quick search and that particular submission has some additional settings. You could sort each shape individually then concatenate back into one array if this function ends up as your best option.

Answer 3

[Azzi Abdelmalek]

 list=strvcat('cir 1','cir 2','cir 10','cir 11',...
    'cir 12','d 1','d 2','d 10','d 11','d 12','ee 15','dhgt 9','azs 45') 
[n,m]=size(list);list1=[];list2=[];listn=[];
for k=1:n;
     index = find(isstrprop(list(k,:), 'digit'), 1)
     list1=strvcat(list1,list(k,1:index-1));
     list2=strvcat(list2,list(k,index:end));
     listn=[listn;str2num(list(k,index:end))];
 end
 list1c=cellstr(list1);
 list2c=cellstr(list2);
 listc=sortrows([list1c list2c])
 listc1=listc(:,1);
 list2n=str2num(char(listc(:,2)))
 result1=[];k=1;result2=[];
 while k<=n
     ind=strmatch(listc1(k),listc1);
     n1=min(ind);n2=max(ind);
     result1=[result1 ;listc1(n1:n2) ]
     result2=[result2; cellstr(num2str(sort(list2n(n1:n2))))]
      k=k+length(ind)
 end
 res1=char(result1);res2=char(result2);res=[];
 for k=1:n
     res=strvcat(res,[strtrim(res1(k,:)) ' ' strtrim(res2(k,:))]  )
 end

%the result is en res variable

Answer 4

[Marvin Seifert]

Its an old question but still maybe I found a simpler solution:

(This works only if there is only one number in the string)

Numbers = zeros(1,length(UnsortedText));
for ii = 1:length(UnsortedText)
log = isstrprop(UnsortedText{ii},'digit')
string_name = UnsortedText{ii};
%This creates a new array only containing the numbers
numbers(ii) = string(string_name(log));
end
[~, a_order] = sort(numbers);
SortedText = UnsortedText(a_order);

Answer 5

[Stephen23]

By far the simplest approach is to download the NATSORT function:

https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/34464-customizable-natural-order-sort

and then use it like this:

C = {'BBB 1'; 'AAA 10'; 'AAA 9'; 'AAA 1'; 'BBB 2'; 'BBB 19'; 'BBB 9'; 'CCC 0'; 'CCC 9' ;'CCC 80'; 'CCC 7'}

C = 11×1 cell array
    {'BBB 1' }
    {'AAA 10'}
    {'AAA 9' }
    {'AAA 1' }
    {'BBB 2' }
    {'BBB 19'}
    {'BBB 9' }
    {'CCC 0' }
    {'CCC 9' }
    {'CCC 80'}
    {'CCC 7' }

D = natsort(C)

D = 11×1 cell array
    {'AAA 1' }
    {'AAA 9' }
    {'AAA 10'}
    {'BBB 1' }
    {'BBB 2' }
    {'BBB 9' }
    {'BBB 19'}
    {'CCC 0' }
    {'CCC 7' }
    {'CCC 9' }
    {'CCC 80'}