asort: a pedestrian alphanumeric string sorter

numerically sorts an array or cell array of strings.

ASORT sorts an array or cell array of alphanumeric strings numerically rather than in ascii dictionary order

strings are divided into three different categories, which are returned in separate cells

- numerically sorted strings that contain only one readable number
- ascii dictionary order sorted strings that contain more than one readable or invalid numbers
- ascii dictionary order sorted strings that contain no numbers

see
> help asort
for explanations and options

this sorter can be used, for instance, to sort files with numerical extensions, eg,

f.1
f.2
f.3
f.10
f.21

look at the accompanying published m-file for a few examples