How to sort an array of ints and strings? [duplicate]

Question

I am trying to sort an array with a mixture of ints and strings. Take for example:

a = ["a", "b", 5, "c", 4, "d", "a1", "a12", 3, 13, 2, "13a", "12a"]

I tried:

a.sort do |x, y|
  if x.class == y.class
    x <=> y
  else
    x.class.to_s <=> y.class.to_s
  end
end

Which returns:

[2, 3, 4, 5, 13, "12a", "13a", "a", "a1", "a12", "b", "c", "d"]

The outcome I want is:

[2, 3, 4, 5, "12a", 13, "13a", "a", "a1", "a12", "b", "c", "d"]

Answer 1

a.sort_by { |x| [(x.to_s.match(/^\d+/) ? x.to_i : 1.0 / 0), x.to_s] }

The idea is to sort first by the numeric value and secondly by the string value. If the the string doesn't start with numeric value, forcefully consider the numeric value to be infinity.

---

EDIT: As OP has clarified that he wants to consider not just the leading numeric value, but all that follow, we can use the same idea, just this time we have to apply it on each individual numeric and non-numeric entity in the string:

a.sort_by do |x|
  x.to_s.split(/(\D+)/).map do |y|
    [(y.match(/\d/) ? y.to_i : 1.0 / 0), y]
  end
end