How to implement natural sorting on the alphanumeric array in swift?

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Mac O’Clock

2 min readFeb 6, 2021

In Swift (or most of the programming language), the default method for sorting an array uses lexicographic order. That means string Foo12 does come before the string Foo2.

Example 1 (Lexical Sort):

In most cases, we perform lexical sorting on our array. But there might be a scenario where we need to use natural sorting for a better look on for end-user. (eg. Sorting File Names). In the natural soring order, the string Foo12 comes after the string Foo2.

We can achieve natural sorting in swift using the localizedStandardCompare(_:) method from the Foundation framework.

Example 2 (Natural Sort):

The macOS Finder also use localizedStandardCompare:, method to sorts filenames.

We can also use the compare(_:options:) method to achieve the same result.

Summary:

localizedStandardCompare(_:) method should be used whenever file names or other strings are presented in lists and tables where Finder-like sorting is appropriate.

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