Question

An array to be sorted has strings such as:

200burgers
1apple
2burgers
11apples

and similar. When sorting ascendingly with caseInsenstive, I get:

11apples
1apple
200burgers
2burgers

Which makes sense, but I would prefer a lexicographical sort that put “1” before “10”, “10” before “100”, &c., such as:

1apple
11apples
2burgers
200burgers

Must I construct a custom comparator or is there some other option?

Answer 1

I think you’ll probably need a custom comparator, but it’d be something really simple:

NSSortDescriptor *descriptor = [NSSortDescriptor sortDescriptorWithKey:@"key" ascending:YES comparator:^(id one, id two) {
    return [one compare:two options:NSCaseInsensitiveSearch | NSNumericSearch];
}];