Natural Sort Order in C#

Question

Anyone have a good resource or provide a sample of a natural order sort in C# for an FileInfo array? I am implementing the IComparer interface in

Answer 1

Here's a relatively simple example that doesn't use P/Invoke and avoids any allocation during execution.

internal sealed class NumericStringComparer : IComparer
{
    public static NumericStringComparer Instance { get; } = new NumericStringComparer();

    public int Compare(string x, string y)
    {
        // sort nulls to the start
        if (x == null)
            return y == null ? 0 : -1;
        if (y == null)
            return 1;

        var ix = 0;
        var iy = 0;

        while (true)
        {
            // sort shorter strings to the start
            if (ix >= x.Length)
                return iy >= y.Length ? 0 : -1;
            if (iy >= y.Length)
                return 1;

            var cx = x[ix];
            var cy = y[iy];

            int result;
            if (char.IsDigit(cx) && char.IsDigit(cy))
                result = CompareInteger(x, y, ref ix, ref iy);
            else
                result = cx.CompareTo(y[iy]);

            if (result != 0)
                return result;

            ix++;
            iy++;
        }
    }

    private static int CompareInteger(string x, string y, ref int ix, ref int iy)
    {
        var lx = GetNumLength(x, ix);
        var ly = GetNumLength(y, iy);

        // shorter number first (note, doesn't handle leading zeroes)
        if (lx != ly)
            return lx.CompareTo(ly);

        for (var i = 0; i < lx; i++)
        {
            var result = x[ix++].CompareTo(y[iy++]);
            if (result != 0)
                return result;
        }

        return 0;
    }

    private static int GetNumLength(string s, int i)
    {
        var length = 0;
        while (i < s.Length && char.IsDigit(s[i++]))
            length++;
        return length;
    }
}

It doesn't ignore leading zeroes, so 01 comes after 2.

Corresponding unit test:

public class NumericStringComparerTests
{
    [Fact]
    public void OrdersCorrectly()
    {
        AssertEqual("", "");
        AssertEqual(null, null);
        AssertEqual("Hello", "Hello");
        AssertEqual("Hello123", "Hello123");
        AssertEqual("123", "123");
        AssertEqual("123Hello", "123Hello");

        AssertOrdered("", "Hello");
        AssertOrdered(null, "Hello");
        AssertOrdered("Hello", "Hello1");
        AssertOrdered("Hello123", "Hello124");
        AssertOrdered("Hello123", "Hello133");
        AssertOrdered("Hello123", "Hello223");
        AssertOrdered("123", "124");
        AssertOrdered("123", "133");
        AssertOrdered("123", "223");
        AssertOrdered("123", "1234");
        AssertOrdered("123", "2345");
        AssertOrdered("0", "1");
        AssertOrdered("123Hello", "124Hello");
        AssertOrdered("123Hello", "133Hello");
        AssertOrdered("123Hello", "223Hello");
        AssertOrdered("123Hello", "1234Hello");
    }

    private static void AssertEqual(string x, string y)
    {
        Assert.Equal(0, NumericStringComparer.Instance.Compare(x, y));
        Assert.Equal(0, NumericStringComparer.Instance.Compare(y, x));
    }

    private static void AssertOrdered(string x, string y)
    {
        Assert.Equal(-1, NumericStringComparer.Instance.Compare(x, y));
        Assert.Equal( 1, NumericStringComparer.Instance.Compare(y, x));
    }
}