Sorting in Alphanumeric Items

CJT · New User Joined: 02 Aug 2007 Posts: 83 Location: Here

Hi I have a requirement,

In My program i have an internal table that contains the tags:

This Tag ID is declared as PIC X(30) and it contains the following values

column1, column3 , column2, etc till column25. (name is as it appears)

They are all jumbled up inside the table

I would like to have it sorted as

column1 , column2, etc ... in an ascending order.

I did a bubble sort, but it appears like this

column1, column10, column11, column12, column2 etc

can anyone suggest how the sort can be accomplished. i would like the solution ASAP

thanks

enrico-sorichetti · Posted: Sat Jan 05, 2008 3:19 pm

You are getting what You asked for, exactly that ...
an alphanumeric sort

the reasonable expectation is to have the x picture fields filled with blanks x'40'

in the EBCDIC collating sequence the blanks(x'40') come before the alphanumeric chars

what You are asking for is not an alphanumeric sort, but some kind of tokenized sort

which means..
split the whole field in alphanumeric and numeric subfields properly aligned
and then carrying on the sort

in your sample means build an auxiliary array with

CJT · New User Joined: 02 Aug 2007 Posts: 83 Location: Here

Heloo E.S,

I redefined the tag field as

Part 1 - Alphanumeric
Part2 - Numeric

and did the sort based on part 2. but it still doesnt work

enrico-sorichetti · Posted: Sat Jan 05, 2008 3:38 pm

redefine is not enough...

did You read carefully my answer with the sample

align align align

CJT · New User Joined: 02 Aug 2007 Posts: 83 Location: Here

I am sorry e.s,

i did not catch by what you meant by aligning

enrico-sorichetti · Posted: Sat Jan 05, 2008 3:51 pm

enrico-sorichetti · Posted: Sat Jan 05, 2008 10:18 pm

the align/justify term means just ...
to put the spaces/blanks were they belong ( by convention/habit)

the alphabetic/alphanumeric fields ( letters and numbers used as characters )
are left aligned/justified ( filled to the right with spaces/blanks )

the numeric fields ( numbers used as numbers - let's not consider the signedness )
are right aligned/justified , filled to the left with spaces/zeroes

this is quite a rough approach...

for the sample You posted anyway the right sorted sequence is
- for the definition of alphanumeric sort and
- for the definition of a single "x pic" field
the one You got to start with

the issue is with the way our brain works ( very fast to associate/disassociate things )
it' s more natural to view as a sorted sequence "column1 ","column2 ","column11"
rather then the sortwise exact sequence "column1 ","column11",column2 "
( note the space at the end of the shorter string )

to be picky ( point out every little thing )
if You want to parse the data the way You asked
the field definition is not adequate
it should be really two fields, a char and a proper numeric

CJT · New User Joined: 02 Aug 2007 Posts: 83 Location: Here

Hi E.S,

thanks for showing the error.

Since according to the project requirement I was not suppsoed to change the declaration, I had to think in another way - like how you had suggested ... about aligning the variables correctly without spaces and so on.

I used a temp numeric variable.

Tag ID is defined as X(30)

Part 2 of TAG ID is numeric 1,2,3 etc

so took Part 2 of Tag ID stripped it of its spaces and moved it to another numeric variable

Now did a sort based on this numeric variable and it worked fine.

Here's the pseudocode