Sort on a string that may contain a number

Question

I need to write a Java Comparator class that compares Strings, however with one twist. If the two strings it is comparing are the same at the beginning and end of the strin

Answer 1

Ian Griffiths of Microsoft has a C# implementation he calls Natural Sorting. Porting to Java should be fairly easy, easier than from C anyway!

UPDATE: There seems to be a Java example on eekboom that does this, see the "compareNatural" and use that as your comparer to sorts.