In computing, natural sort order (or natural sorting) is the ordering of strings in alphabetical order, except that multi-digit numbers are treated atomically, i.e., as if they were a single character. Natural sort order has been promoted as being more human-friendly ("natural") than machine-oriented, pure alphabetical sort order.For example, in alphabetical sorting, "z11" would be sorted before "z2" because the "1" in the first string is sorted as smaller than "2", while in natural sorting "z2" is sorted before "z11" because "2" is treated as smaller than "11".
Alphabetical sorting:
z11
z2Natural...