In computing, natural sort order (or natural sorting) is the ordering of strings in alphabetical order, except that multi-digit numbers are treated atomically, i.e., as if they were a single character.
Natural sort order has been promoted as being more human-friendly ("natural") than machine-oriented, pure alphabetical sort order.
Alphabetical sorting: Natural sorting: Functionality to sort by natural sort order is now widely available in software libraries for many programming languages.
[2][3][4][5][6][7] During the 1996 MacHack conference, the Natural Order Mac OS System Extension was conceived and implemented overnight on-site as an entry for the Best Hack contest.
[8][9] Dave Koelle wrote the Alphanum Algorithm in 1997[10] and Martin Pool published Natural Order String Comparison in 2000.