How to do alpha numeric sort perl?

Question

I have a file which looks like this:

80,1p21  
81,19q13  
82,6p12.3  
83,Xp11.22  
84,3pter-q21  
86,3q26.33  
87,14q24.1-q24.2|14q24|14q22-q24  
88,1q42-q43  
8         


        

Answer 1

I actually found the answer to this. The code looks a bit complicated though.

#!/usr/bin/env perl

use strict;  
use warnings;

sub main {   
my $file;  
if (@ARGV != 1) {   
    die "Usage: perl hashofhash_sort.pl <filename>\n";
}   
else {  
    $file = $ARGV[0];   
}  

open(IN, $file) or die "Error!! Cannot open the $file file: $!\n";
my @file = <IN>;
chomp @file;
my ($entrez_gene, $loci, $chr, $band, $pq, $band_num);
my (%chromosome, %loci_entrez);

foreach my $line (@file) {
    if ($line =~ /(\d+),(.+)/) {
        # Entrez genes
        $entrez_gene = $1;

        # Locus like 12p23.4
        $loci = $2;

        if ($loci =~ /^(\d+)(.+)?/) {
            # chromosome number alone (only numericals)
            $chr = $1;
            if ($2) {
                # locus minus chromosome number. If 12p23.4, then $band is p23.4
                $band = "$2";
                if ($band =~ /^([pq])(.+)/) {
                    # either p or q
                    $pq = $1;
                    # stores the numericals. for p23.4, stores 23.4
                    $band_num = $2;
                }

                if (exists $chromosome{$chr}) {
                    if (exists $chromosome{$chr}{$pq}) {
                        push (@{$chromosome{$chr}{$pq}}, $band_num);
                    }
                    else {
                        $chromosome{$chr}{$pq} = [$band_num];
                    }
                }

                else {
                    $chromosome{$chr}{$pq} = [$band_num];
                }
            }
        }
    }
} # End of foreach loop

foreach my $key (sort {$a <=> $b} keys %chromosome) {
    my %seen = ();
    foreach my $key2 (sort {$a cmp $b } keys %{$chromosome{$key}}) {
        my @unique = grep { ! $seen{$_}++ } @{$chromosome{$key}{$key2}};
        my @sorted = sort @unique;
        foreach my $element (@sorted) {
            my $sorted_locus = "$key$key2$element";
            if (exists $loci_entrez{$sorted_locus}) {
                foreach my $element2 (@{$loci_entrez{$sorted_locus}}) {
                        print "$element2,$sorted_locus\n";

                }
            }
        }
    }

}


} # End of main

main();

Answer 2

#!/usr/bin/env perl

use strict;
use warnings;

my @datas   = map { /^(\d+),(\d*)(.*)$/; [$1, $2, $3]; } <DATA>;
my @res     = sort {$a->[1] <=> $b->[1] or $a->[2] cmp $b->[2]} @datas;
foreach my $data (@res) {
    my ($x, $y, $z) = @{$data};
    print "$x,$y$z\n";
}

__DATA__
80,1p21
81,19q13
82,6p12.3
83,Xp11.22
84,3pter-q21
86,3q26.33
87,14q24.1-q24.2|14q24|14q22-q24
88,1q42-q43
89,11q13.1
90,2q23-q24
91,12q13
92,2q22.3
93,3p22
94,12q11-q14
95,3p21.1
97,14q24.3
98,2p16.2 

Answer 3

If you read the documentation for sort, you'll see that you don't need to do a numeric sort in Perl. You can do string comparisons too.

@sorted = sort { $a cmp $b } @unsorted;

But that still leaves you with a problem as, for example, 19q will sort before 6p. So you can write your own sort function which can make whatever transformations you want before doing the comparison.

@sorted = sort my_complex_sort @unsorted;

sub my_complex_sort {
  # code that compares $a and $b and returns -1, 0 or 1 as appropriate
  # It's probably best in most cases to do the actual comparison using cmp or <=>

  # Extract the digits following the first comma
  my ($number_a) = $a =~ /,(\d+)/;
  my ($number_b) = $b =~ /,(\d+)/;

  # Extract the letter following those digits
  my ($letter_a) = $a =~ /,\d+(a-z)/;
  my ($letter_b) = $b =~ /,\d+(a-z)/;

  # Compare and return
  return $number_a <=> $number_b or $letter_a cmp $letter_b;
}