Numerical and Chronological Order
Strings representing numbers may be sorted based on the values of the numbers that they represent. For example, "-4", "2.5", "10", "89", "30,000". Note that pure application of this method may provide only a partial ordering on the strings, since different strings can represent the same number (as with "2" and "2.0", or when scientific notation is used, "2e3" and "2000").
A similar approach may be taken with strings representing dates or other items that can be ordered chronologically or in some other natural fashion.
Read more about this topic: Collation
Famous quotes containing the words numerical and/or order:
“The terrible tabulation of the French statists brings every piece of whim and humor to be reducible also to exact numerical ratios. If one man in twenty thousand, or in thirty thousand, eats shoes, or marries his grandmother, then, in every twenty thousand, or thirty thousand, is found one man who eats shoes, or marries his grandmother.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Perchance not he but Nature ailed,
The world and not the infant failed.
It was not ripe yet to sustain
A genius of so fine a strain,
Who gazed upon the sun and moon
As if he came unto his own,
And, pregnant with his grander thought,
Brought the old order into doubt.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)