IComparer for natural sorting [duplicate]

Question

I have been hunting around for a solution to this for a while now.

When I sort the below using a string sort I have a list of:

10
10b
1111
1164
1174
23
23A
23B
23D
23E

I really want the list to be:

10
10b
23
23A
23B
23D
23E
1111
1164
1174

A numerical sort does not do the job either.

Answer 1

If you have LINQ, you can use OrderBy:

Regex digitPart = new Regex(@"^\d+", RegexOptions.Compiled);
...
myList.OrderBy(x => int.Parse(digitPart.Match(x).Value))

Answer 2

The easiest is to wrap the Win32 API call as explained in https://stackoverflow.com/a/248613/631687

Answer 3

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Text.RegularExpressions;

public class NumStrCmp : IComparer<string> {
    public int Compare(string x, string y){
        Regex regex = new Regex(@"(?<NumPart>\d+)(?<StrPart>\D*)",RegexOptions.Compiled);
        var mx = regex.Match(x);
        var my = regex.Match(y);
        var ret = int.Parse(mx.Groups["NumPart"].Value).CompareTo(int.Parse(my.Groups["NumPart"].Value));
        if(ret != 0) return ret;
        return mx.Groups["StrPart"].Value.CompareTo(my.Groups["StrPart"].Value);
    }
}

class Sample {
    static public void Main(){
        var data = new List<string>() {"10","10b","1111","1164","1174","23","23A","23B","23D","23E"};
        data.Sort(new NumStrCmp());
        foreach(var x in data){
            Console.WriteLine(x);
        }
   }
}