Just for reference, here is the same approach with a custom comparator. I didn’t bench these but since it doesn’t build tuples it is probably faster:
defmodule Natural do
def natural_sort(enumerable) do
Enum.sort(enumerable, __MODULE__)
end
def compare(x, y) do
case do_compare(String.upcase(x), String.upcase(y)) do
:eq -> do_compare(x, y)
lt_or_gt -> lt_or_gt
end
end
defp do_compare(x, x), do: :eq
defp do_compare(x, y) when x > y, do: :gt
defp do_compare(_, _), do: :lt
end