Question

How do I sort something alphanumerically in C?  

consider the example 10abc, 2abc, 2abbbb,b500, a500cd

the output should be a500cd < b500 < 10abc < 2abbbb < 2abc.

another example would be  A < AB < A3D < 3DA < 5.  

elements are in a linked list

Answer 1

Hi

I have a simple solution or you, see below alogorithm to sort strings, similiarly you can do in it for link list

str[0] will represent one node of list and str[1] is another node of the link list and so on....., please let me know for any clarifications i can help you

step 1:

char str[] ={"b500","a500cd"}

int i = 0, j =0;

for(i=0;i<=2;i++)
      for(j=i+1;j<=2;j++){
         if(strcmp(str[i],str[j])>0){
            strcpy(temp,str[i]);
            strcpy(str[i],str[j]);
            strcpy(str[j],temp);
         }
      }

//Revised Answer ,

Now the issue here is actual value of character 0 -9 is less than a - z in he ascii chart so you will face this problem ,

so what we can do is when we get a character from 0 - 9 we will add 123 which is value after 'z' , so the value becomes greater than z and then we can compare the characters ,so now i have revised the alogorithm as below.

for(int i =0 i < count ; i ++){

for( int j =0 ;j < strlen(str[i]); j ++){

char temp1 = str[i][j];

char temp2 = str[i+1][j];

if(temp1 > ='0' && temp1 < ='9'){

temp1 = temp 1 + 123;

}

if(temp2 > ='0' && temp2 < ='9'){

temp2 = temp2 + 123;

}

if (temp1> temp2){

strcpy(temp,str[i]);

strcpy(str[i],str[i+1]);

strcpy(str[i+1],temp);

}else if( temp1 < temp2){

continue;

}else if (temp1 == temp2){

break;

}

}

}