Natural sort in C - “array of strings, containing numbers and letters”

Question

Looking for a proven to work algorithm for production. Did see this example but not finding much else on the web or in books.

i.e. file_10.txt > file_2.txt

Thank

Answer 1

I assume you already know the C standard library qsort() function:

void qsort(void *base,
           size_t nel,
           size_t width,
           int (*compar)(const void *, const void *);

That last parameter is a function pointer, which means you can pass any function to it. You could use strcmp(), in fact, but that would give you ASCIIbetical, and you specifically want a natural sort.

In that case, you could write one pretty easily:

#include 

int natural(const char *a, const char *b)
{
    if(isalpha(*a) && isalpha(*b))
      {
        // compare two letters
      }
    else
      {
        if(isalpha(*a))
          {
            // compare a letter to a digit (or other non-letter)
          }
        else if(isalpha(*b))
          {
            // compare a digit/non-letter to a letter
          }
        else
          {
            // compare two digits/non-letters
          }
      }
}

Some of the elses could be cleared up if you just return early, but there's a basic structure. Check ctype.h for functions like isalpha() (if a character is part of the alphabet), isdigit(), isspace(), and more.