Add natural sorting function to cell content

[aborruso]

Hi,
today I needed to sort (natural sorting) this list of values 15,1,2/AX,22,1/C,1/2,1/1,1/A,1/BA,2,3, to obtain 1,1/1,1/2,1/A,1/BA,1/C,2,2/AX,3,15,22.

I did this using the shell

echo "15,1,2/AX,22,1/C,1/2,1/1,1/A,1/BA,2,3" | tr , "\n" | sort -V | paste -sd, -

I'm not able to build a plugin, but I have build a Python hello world example, and some of the skilled users, could turn it into a plugin or a VisiData function:

import re

_nsre = re.compile('([0-9]+)')
def natural_sort_key(s):
    return [int(text) if text.isdigit() else text.lower()
            for text in re.split(_nsre, s)]

mStr = '15,1,2/AX,22,1/C,1/2,1/1,1/A,1/BA,2,3'
list1 = mStr.split(',')

list1.sort(key=natural_sort_key)

joined_string = ",".join(list1)

The result is 1,1/1,1/2,1/A,1/BA,1/C,2,2/AX,3,15,22.

The list separator should become an option.

[aborruso]

I'm adding two really interesting related URLs:

• https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/coreutils.html#Version-sort-ordering (search "natural sort");
• a great python module and a cli to run natural sorting https://natsort.readthedocs.io/en/master/index.html

Using natsort cli, the "locale" option (a sort of human and non ASCII sorting):

echo "SNC-1-10-1r-1/A-2/10-10/1A2-10/A-1000/C1-a" | tr - "\n" | natsort -l  | paste -sd- -

gives me

1-1/A-1r-2/10-10-10/1A2-10/A-1000/C1-a-SNC

[frosencrantz]

I had wanted to respond to this for some time.

It is pretty easy to add your function into your .visidatarc and then use
it with addcol-expr to create a new column with the sorted value, then type in natsort(curcol) or natsort(curcol, delimiter='/'):

import re

_nsre = re.compile('([0-9]+)')
def natural_sort_key(s):
    return [int(text) if text.isdigit() else text.lower()
            for text in re.split(_nsre, s)]

def natsort(value, delimiter=','):
   list1 = value.split(delimiter)
   list1.sort(key=natural_sort_key)
   joined_string = delimiter.join(list1)
   return joined_string

I've wanted to do something similar with a column of values. It looks like it is possible to create a custom column type, and then use https://github.com/SethMMorton/natsort/ to sort the values. If the values were wrapped in a class, it looks like it would be possible to do something like this for adding natural sort order: SethMMorton/natsort#60 (comment)

Also, this seems like more a request for a new plugin from the community than from Saul or Anja directly. I am wondering if we could add another issue tag for plugin requests or community volunteers.

[aborruso]

Thank you very much @frosencrantz

[saulpw]

Yeah, I agree with @frosencrantz, for the time being I think this should be more of a plugin, and we can see how it evolves. Converting to a discussion, feel free to continue to toss around ideas.

[aborruso]

@frosencrantz @saulpw I have added it as "recipe", to my VisiData guide in Italian https://ondata.github.io/guidaVisiData/ricette/#applicare-il-natural-sorting-ai-contenuti-di-una-cella

Thank you again