From: Kevin Smith <sent@...>
Date: 2001-02-26T00:17:16+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:11535] Re: Sorting

Guy N. Hurst wrote:
>your code generates:
>["Name 1", "Name 10", "Name 100", "Name 101", 
>"Name 11", "Name 2", "Name 200", "Name 22"]
>
>If I add "[1]to_i" after each split, then it does things better...

Thanks for pointing this out. Of course you are 
correct. 

That's what I had intended to do, but I got so 
excited when the array <=> array just *worked* 
(before I looked it up in the book) that I forgot 
to continue coding until the task was done. (Now 
where did I put those unit tests again?)

>b = strings.sort do | a, b |
>        a.split[1].to_i <=> b.split[1].to_i
>end

>Of course, this is assuming there is a second element in the array after the split, and 
>that it is convertible to an integer.

Indeed. The original requirement was pretty 
vague. Prehaps the need was for each string to be 
sorted entirely, treating each word as a number 
where appropriate and text otherwise. In that 
case, I would write my own compare(array1, 
array2) method that did a split, and iterated 
through each word treating it appropriately.

It may not be as clever as the regex based 
solutions, but I prefer clear, simple brute force 
unless there's some requirement that forces me in 
a different direction.

Kevin