naturalsort 1.3

Usage

Here’s an example of regular sorting (based on the ASCII order of individual characters) compared to natural order sorting:

> # Import the sorted() alternative.
> from natsort import natsort
>
> # This is plain old sorting (what we DON'T want).
> sorted(['1', '5', '10', '50'])
['1', '10', '5', '50']
>
> # This is natural order sorting (what we DO want).
> natsort(['1', '5', '10', '50'])
['1', '5', '10', '50']
>
> # natsort() accepts a optional ``reverse`` argument for consistency with
> the built-in sorted() function.
> natsort(['1', '5', '10', '50'], reverse=True)
['50', '10', '5', '1']

> from natsort import natsort
> from pprint import pprint
> versions = ['package-name_1_all.deb',
...           'package-name_1.5_all.deb',
...           'package-name_2_all.deb']

> pprint(natsort(versions))
['package-name_1.5_all.deb',
 'package-name_1_all.deb',
 'package-name_2_all.deb']

> from os.path import basename, splitext
> def version_from_fname(filename):
...   filename, extension = splitext(basename(filename))
..    name, version, architecture = filename.split('_')
...   return version
...
> pprint(natsort(versions, key=version_from_fname))
['package-name_1_all.deb',
 'package-name_1.5_all.deb',
 'package-name_2_all.deb']

Why another natsort module?!

The natsort package on PyPI is more advanced and configurable than my naturalsort package, so depending on your use case you may prefer to use that package instead. Here are the differences:

1. My naturalsort package implements only a small subset of the functionality of the natsort package, specifically the following calls result in the same sorting order:

   naturalsort package:

   natsort.natsort(['1-1', '1-2'])

   natsort package:

   natsort.natsorted(['1-1', '1-2'], number_type=None)

   This example shows the different goals of the two packages: The naturalsort package is intended to sort version numbers while the natsort package by default interprets dashes as a negative sign and requires the keyword argument number_type=None to disable this behavior.

2. The naturalsort package works on Python 2.4 and 2.5 while the natsort package requires at least Python 2.6.

Contact

The latest version of naturalsort is available on PyPI and GitHub. For bug reports please create an issue on GitHub. If you have questions, suggestions, etc. feel free to send me an e-mail at peter@peterodding.com.

License

This software is licensed under the MIT license.

© 2014 Peter Odding.