Need Help sorting alphabetically.

[Chris Arai]

Hello All!

Thanks for all the efforts to read my mind.  Especially Alex who provided a
nice methodical approach, and Duncan who actually read my mind the best.

The purpose of all this was to be able to sort a directory and then be able
to use HTMLgen to create SeriesDocs.  I modified Duncan's approach slightly
thinking that it might optimize it ever so slightly (not really an issue in
my case.)  Here is what I actually ended up using:

import os,string,re

def make_key(astring,pattern=re.compile(r'(\d+)|([a-z]+)')):
    # Used [a-z]+ because \D+ matched "A_"
    # Put lower() here so I could use [a-z] instead of [a-zA-Z],
    # and only call lower() once
    vals = pattern.split(string.lower(astring))
    res = []
    for i in range(1, len(vals), 3):
        if vals[i]:
            res.append(int(vals[i]))
        else:
            res.append(vals[i+1])
    return res

def alphasort(list):
    l1, res = [], []
    for v in list: l1.append((make_key(v), v))
    l1.sort()
    for k, v in l1: res.append(v)
    return res


if __name__=='__main__':

    # My real goal was to sort a directory "alphabetically"
    # (whatever I meant by that ;-))
    m=os.listdir('.')

    s=alphasort(m)
    print "%20s   %20s"% ('Sorted','Unsorted')
    for i in range(len(s)):
        print "%20s   %20s"%(s[i],m[i])

----end snip----
ouput:

bash-2.02$ python alphasort.py
              Sorted               Unsorted
        alphasort.py           globtest.py~
       alphasort.py~          makethumb.py~
      #globtest.py~#           makethumb.py
        globtest.py~                outtest
        makethumb.py           Pg66_100.GIF
       makethumb.py~           Pg71_300.GIF
             outtest         Pg71_A_300.gif
            outtest2               outtest2
         Pg1_100.GIF         #globtest.py~#
         Pg2_100.GIF          alphasort.py~
         Pg9_100.GIF           alphasort.py
        Pg17_100.GIF           Pg90_100.GIF
        Pg20_100.GIF           Pg17_100.GIF
        Pg66_100.GIF            Pg2_100.GIF
        Pg71_300.GIF           Pg20_100.GIF
      Pg71_A_300.gif            Pg9_100.GIF
        Pg90_100.GIF            Pg1_100.GIF


Thanks again,

Chris

Duncan Booth wrote:

> chris at araidesign.com (Chris Arai) wrote in
> <3A3F1A91.A7ED9182 at araidesign.com>:
>
> >Hi,
> >
> >This seems like it should be obvious, but it is evading me!
> >
> >I would like to sort alphabetically (I'm not sure that is the correct
> >term) so that strings of alpha numerics sort alphabetically instead of
> >by ASCII order.
> >
> >eg:
> >>>> m=['Pg95_100.GIF',
> >'Pg9_100.GIF','Pg95A_100.gif','Pg9A_100.gif','Pg10_100.gif']
> >>>> m.sort()
> >>>> m
> >['Pg10_100.gif', 'Pg95A_100.gif', 'Pg95_100.GIF', 'Pg9A_100.gif',
> >'Pg9_100.GIF']
> >
> >
> >I would like the order to be
> >['Pg9_100.GIF', 'Pg9A_100.gif', 'Pg10_100.gif, 'Pg95_100.GIF',
> >Pg95A_100.gif' ]
> >
> >What is the obvious answer??
> >
> Try this:
> ---- begin cut ---
> import re
> from string import lower
>
> def make_key(value, pattern = re.compile('(\d+)|(\D+)')):
>     vals = pattern.split(value)
>     res = []
>     for i in range(1, len(vals), 3):
>         if vals[i]:
>             res.append(int(vals[i]))
>         else:
>             res.append(lower(vals[i+1]))
>     return res
>
> def cleversort(list):
>     l1, res = [], []
>     for v in list: l1.append((make_key(v), v))
>     l1.sort()
>     for k, v in l1: res.append(v)
>     return res
>
> m=['Pg95_100.GIF',
> 'Pg9_100.GIF','Pg95A_100.gif','Pg9A_100.gif','Pg10_100.gif']
>
> print cleversort(m)
>
> ----- end cut ----
> The output is:
> ['Pg9_100.GIF', 'Pg9A_100.gif', 'Pg10_100.gif', 'Pg95_100.GIF',
> 'Pg95A_100.gif'] as you requested.
>
> This sorts each sequence of digits as its numeric value, and each
> sequence of non digits as its lowercase equivalent (which I think is what
> you were asking for).

--
Chris Arai
Arai Design
chris at araidesign.com
http://www.araidesign.com
707 431 1299
FAX 431 1599

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