Sort Aplhanumeric data with special characters in javascript

Question

DATA = ["Ge_total_EN394" , "p1@5end_chr2:191878874..191878938,-" , "p23@5end_chr2:191839657..191839662,-" , "p2@5end_chr2:191878812..191878823,-"]

I would like to sort the data in ascending order. The function I am using at the moment to sort is following

function sort(s1, s2) {
  var s1lower = s1.toLowerCase();
  var s2lower = s2.toLowerCase();
  return s1lower > s2lower? 1 : (s1lower < s2lower? -1 : 0);
}

however this gives me following output

"Ge_total_EN394" , "p1@5end_chr2:191878874..191878938,-" , "p23@5end_chr2:191839657..191839662,-" , "p2@5end_chr2:191878812..191878823,-"

The p23 is sitting before p2, which is not correct . I am not sure how to sort data properly so that p2 comes before

So why should p2@... string come before p23@...? What is the formal sorting rule for that? — zerkms
– zerkms, Commented Oct 21, 2016 at 1:49
p23 does indeed come lexically before p2@ - because 3 (charcode 51) is less than @ (charcode 64) — Jaromanda X
– Jaromanda X, Commented Oct 21, 2016 at 1:49
is there is a piece of code that can only sort alphanumeric characters and disregard any special characters — Isha Nagpal
– Isha Nagpal, Commented Oct 21, 2016 at 1:59

nnnnnn · Accepted Answer · 2016-10-21 02:17:00Z

is there is a piece of code that can only sort alphanumeric characters and disregard any special characters

Yes, this is easy with a regex replace to remove all non-alphanumeric characters:

function sort(s1, s2) {
  var s1lower = s1.toLowerCase().replace(/[^a-z0-9]/g, "");
  var s2lower = s2.toLowerCase().replace(/[^a-z0-9]/g, "");
  return s1lower > s2lower? 1 : (s1lower < s2lower? -1 : 0);
}

However, I don't think simply disregarding "special" characters is what you actually need, because if you just keep the alphanumeric characters you'd have:

"p235endchr2191839657191839662"   // originally "p23@..."
"p25endchr2191878812191878823"    // originally "p2@..."

...and so the p23 item would still come before the p2 item.

What you seem to actually want is if there is an @ symbol then sort by the part before the @, so perhaps something like:

function sort(s1, s2) {
  var s1lower = s1.toLowerCase().split("@");
  var s2lower = s2.toLowerCase().split("@");
  if (s1lower[0] > s2lower[0])
    return 1;
  else if (s1lower[0] < s2lower[0])
    return -1;
  else
    return s1lower[1] > s2lower[1] ? 1 : s1lower[1] < s2lower[1] ? -1 : 0;
}

DATA = ["Ge_total_EN394" , "p1@5end_chr2:191878874..191878938,-" , "p23@5end_chr2:191839657..191839662,-" , "p2@5end_chr2:191878812..191878823,-", "p23@1end_chr2:191878812..191878823,-"];

DATA.sort(sort);
console.log(DATA);

(I've changed it to use an if/else if/else to make it more readable than it would be with several chained ternary operators.)

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