I wonder if the the Kotlin stdlib comes with an alphanumeric comparator for "natural order" of file ...

# getting-started

[Stefan Oltmann]

I wonder if the the Kotlin stdlib comes with an alphanumeric comparator for "natural order" of file names like https://github.com/sawano/alphanumeric-comparator

[Stefan Oltmann]

This is a shorter example in Kotlin:
https://rosettacode.org/wiki/Natural_sorting#Kotlin

[Stefan Oltmann]

Since there are is so many functionality of Guava and Apache Commons build into the kotlin stdlib I somehow refuse to believe this alpha numeric sort should not be part of it... Please tell me that I'm just blind.

[ephemient]

stdlib doesn't contain any locale stuff and natural sorting is pretty tied up in that

[Stefan Oltmann]

Where would I look for that?

[ephemient]

not sure what you mean

[ephemient]

depends on what platform you're on; for example, if you have ICU4J you can use

(Collator.getInstance() as RuleBasedCollator).apply { numericCollation = true }

for natural sorting you should use a locale-aware collator anyway, which is simply not cross-platform/stdlib

[Stefan Oltmann]

Ok, I see. It's up to third party frameworks then. Maybe a small chance that Kotlin/Native would get it as an extension.

[Stefan Oltmann]

It may not be cross-plattform, yes, but in Windows Explorer and macOS Finder I see the same natural sorting I would expect anywhere. So it would have made sense to me that there is a place for that in a Kotlin lib

[ephemient]

I would not expect Kotlin to ship its own copy of a library as huge as ICU, you should link it yourself if you need it

[Stefan Oltmann]

Not sure about that. Kotlin has many features previously found only in Guava & Apache Commons

[ephemient]

this is not a feature found in either Guava or Apache Commons as far as I know

[ephemient]

to implement it properly you need a CLDR or an equivalent database of per-locale rules, which needs to be updated with Unicode changes

[Stefan Oltmann]

https://commons.apache.org/proper/commons-collections/apidocs/org/apache/commons/collections4/ComparatorUtils.html

[Stefan Oltmann]

Apache Commons Collections contains it

[Stefan Oltmann]

And Kotlin Collections compared to JDK standard has really a lot of it already contained

[ephemient]

naturalComparator is not "natural string order" you're talking about, it is the no-op "natural object order" comparator

[Stefan Oltmann]

Oh, ok, I confused that

[ephemient]

for comparison, Swift does require ICU, which is a pretty annoying dependency for non-macos users

[ephemient]

and on Linux it bundles the CLDR database, which then ends up out of sync with what's on the system… this is not a simple problem

[Stefan Oltmann]

Too bad 😕

[Stefan Oltmann]

So all these samples like https://rosettacode.org/wiki/Natural_sorting#Kotlin are defect because they miss out things?

[ephemient]

that example there is assuming a english-like locale

[Stefan Oltmann]

Ok, I see

[Stefan Oltmann]

Thanks.