Intelligent sorting: A bit of a poser RESULTS CORRECTION

[FlexibleLearning]

I made an inexcusable error when applying the solutions in the benchtests.
When adjusting Mike's solution to handle commas in the list I omitted to
adjust the itemDel. The corrected solution is below.

As a result, Mike's solution is not only very fast, but also sub-sorts the
alpha component and handles mixed suffix components (which is very cool).
However, as pointed out, it cannot handle alpha-only list items. Dave's
solution can handle lists with or without numbers, but the sort order is
inexact.

Using the insights of both solutions, I have based a composite solution on
Mike's routine adjusted with the flexibility Dave's routine. It has Mike's
speed and ability to sort mixed suffixes, but includes Dave's ability to
sort mixed alpha-only and alphanumeric lists. I think this provides the best
of everything for a generic library function...

function sortMe5 pList
  --| Hugh Senior <admin at FlexibleLearning.com>
  --| Based on a solution by Mike Bonner <bonnmike at gmail.com>
  set the itemDel to numtochar(8)
  repeat for each line theLine in pList
    if matchchunk(theLine,"([a-zA-Z\s]\d)",theChar,theEnd) then
      put numtochar(8) after char theChar of theLine
    else put numtochar(8) after theLine
    put theLine & CR after tTemp
  end repeat
  delete last char of tTemp
  sort lines of tTemp numeric by item 2 of each
  sort lines of tTemp by item 1 of each
  replace numtochar(8) with "" in tTemp
  return tTemp
end sortMe5

a 1
b20
a 20
a 2
b10
a 3
b3
a 1a
b2
a 10
b1a
d
c
b
a

gives...

a
a 1
a 1a
a 2
a 3
a 10
a 20
b
b1a
b2
b3
b10
b20
c
d

Prior Work...

function sortMe1 pVar
  --| Mike Bonner <bonnmike at gmail.com>
  set the itemDel to numtochar(8)
  repeat for each line theLIne in PVar
    get matchchunk(theLine,"([a-zA-Z\s]\d)" , theChar,theEnd )
    put numtochar(8) after char theChar of theLine
    put theLine & return after tTemp
  end repeat
  delete the last char of tTemp
  sort lines of tTemp ascending numeric by item 2 of each
  sort lines of tTemp ascending by item 1 of each
  replace numtochar(8) with empty in tTemp
  return tTemp
end sortMe1

function sortMe2 tData
  --| Dave Cragg <dave.cragg at lacscentre.co.uk>
  set the itemDel to numtochar(8)
  put "(^.*?)([0-9]*$)" into tRE
  put "" into tData2
  repeat for each line tLine in tData
    get matchText(tLine, tRE, tS, tNum)
    put tS & numtochar(8) & tNum & cr after tData2
  end repeat
  sort lines of tData2 numeric by item -1 of each
  sort lines of tData2 by item 1 of each
  put "" into tData3
  repeat for each line tLine in tData2
    put item 1 to -2 of tLine & item -1 of tLine & cr after tData3
  end repeat
  return tData3
end sortMe2


/H