Sort an array with strings and numbers

Question

I passed few hours searching about a lib or a way to do this:

I have an array []string{"ex10", "ex2", "ex1"} and after call the sort.Strings or using sort.Slice to compare with an array of bytes I get the result []string{"ex1", "ex10", "ex2"}

anyone has an idea how to implement this?

if anyone knows swift I've found the solution here

This is called natural sort: golanglibs.com/search?q=natural+sort — Peter
– Peter, Commented Jan 11, 2019 at 23:15
To add to the other comments/answers, I would recommend to avoid this kind of data for sorting. Normalize it with leading zeros instead. The problem is that you'll run into all kinds of corner cases unless your problem is simple - JimB's answer assumes a certain format and will fail for others, for example. It's often worthwhile to clean up your data instead of bending backwards to process it — Eli Bendersky
– Eli Bendersky, Commented Jan 12, 2019 at 13:29

Mr_Pink · Accepted Answer · 2019-01-11 22:15:31Z

3

If you don't want the numbers sorted lexicographically, you need to separate them from the strings and parse them as integers.

This example assumes there is always a 2 letter prefix with a valid number, and slices the string accordingly: https://play.golang.org/p/LaX-pTr6etc

s := []string{"ex10", "ex2", "ex1"}

sort.Slice(s, func(i, j int) bool {
    if s[i][:2] != s[j][:2] {
        return s[i] < s[j]
    }
    ii, _ := strconv.Atoi(s[i][2:])
    jj, _ := strconv.Atoi(s[j][2:])
    return ii < jj
})

answered Jan 11, 2019 at 22:15

Mr_Pink

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