Question

I have an array with the following values

asd sdf dsdf 1sadf *sdf !sdf @asdf _asd .sadf (sadf )sadf #sadf 
^asdf &asdf %asdf -sadf =sadf +sadf -sdf

and i want to sort it in javascript in the following way in to three parts.

1. word starting from special character
2. word starting from digit
3. word starting from alphabets.

So this should be the sequence of the sorted array.

EDIT:
Here’s a function that I’ve been experimenting with:

function naturalSort(a, b) {
   a = a.path.toLowerCase();
   b = b.path.toLowerCase();
   var re = /(^-?[0-9]+(\.?[0-9]*)[df]?e?[0-9]?$|^0x[0-9a-f]+$|[0-9]+)/gi,
  sre = /(^[ ]*|[ ]*|[_]*$)/g,
  dre = /(^([\w ]+,?[\w ]+)?[\w ]+,?[\w ]+\d+:\d+(:\d+)?[\w ]?|^\d{1,4}[\/\-]\d{1,4}[\/\-]\d{1,4}|^\w+, \w+ \d+, \d{4})/,
  hre = /^0x[0-9a-f]+$/i,
  ore = /^0/,
   // convert all to strings and trim()
  x = a.toString().replace(sre, '') || '',
  y = b.toString().replace(sre, '') || '',
   // chunk/tokenize
  xN = x.replace(re, '\0$1\0').replace(/\0$/, '').replace(/^\0/, '').split('\0'),
  yN = y.replace(re, '\0$1\0').replace(/\0$/, '').replace(/^\0/, '').split('\0'),
   // numeric, hex or date detection
  xD = parseInt(x.match(hre)) || (xN.length != 1 && x.match(dre) && Date.parse(x)),
  yD = parseInt(y.match(hre)) || xD && y.match(dre) && Date.parse(y) || null;
   // first try and sort Hex codes or Dates
   if (yD)
    if (xD < yD) return -1;
    else if (xD > yD) return 1;
   // natural sorting through split numeric strings and default strings
   for (var cLoc = 0, numS = Math.max(xN.length, yN.length); cLoc < numS; cLoc++) {
    // find floats not starting with '0', string or 0 if not defined (Clint Priest)
    oFxNcL = !(xN[cLoc] || '').match(ore) && parseFloat(xN[cLoc]) || xN[cLoc] || 0;
    oFyNcL = !(yN[cLoc] || '').match(ore) && parseFloat(yN[cLoc]) || yN[cLoc] || 0;
    // handle numeric vs string comparison - number < string - (Kyle Adams)
    if (isNaN(oFxNcL) !== isNaN(oFyNcL)) return (isNaN(oFxNcL)) ? -1 : 1;
    // rely on string comparison if different types - i.e. '02' < 2 != '02' < '2'
    else if (typeof oFxNcL !== typeof oFyNcL) {
     oFxNcL += '';
     oFyNcL += '';
    }
    if (oFxNcL <= oFyNcL) return -1;
    if (oFxNcL >= oFyNcL) return 1;
   }
   return 0;
  }

Answer 1

To be honest, I have no idea what your posted function does … at all.

The following approach compares strings on their first character, using positional occurrence. Strings with the same first character are sorted regularly.

Btw, didn’t test for empty strings.

function MySort(alphabet)
{
    return function(a, b) {
        var index_a = alphabet.indexOf(a[0]),
        index_b = alphabet.indexOf(b[0]);

        if (index_a === index_b) {
            // same first character, sort regular
            if (a < b) {
                return -1;
            } else if (a > b) {
                return 1;
            }
            return 0;
        } else {
            return index_a - index_b;
        }
    }
}

var items = ['asd','sdf', 'dsdf', '1sadf', '*sdf', '!sdf', '@asdf', '_asd', '.sadf', '(sadf', ')sadf', '#sadf', '^asdf', '&asdf', '%asdf', '-sadf', '=sadf', '+sadf', '-sdf', 'sef'],
sorter = MySort('*!@_.()#^&%-=+01234567989abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz');

console.log(items.sort(sorter));

Output:

["*sdf", "!sdf", "@asdf", "_asd", ".sadf", "(sadf", ")sadf", "#sadf", "^asdf", 
 "&asdf", "%asdf", "-sadf", "-sdf", "=sadf", "+sadf", "1sadf", 
 "asd", "dsdf", "sdf", "sef"]