Glenn Maynard wrote:
Is this just a consequence of the way that strverscmp is implemented?
DESCRIPTION
Often one has files jan1, jan2, ..., jan9, jan10, ... and it feels wrong when ls orders them jan1,
jan10, ..., jan2, ..., jan9. In order to rectify this, GNU introduced the -v option to ls(1), which is
implemented using versionsort(3), which again uses strverscmp().
Thus, the task of strverscmp() is to compare two strings and find the "right" order, while strcmp() only
finds the lexicographic order. This function does not use the locale category LC_COLLATE, so is meant
mostly for situations where the strings are expected to be in ASCII.
What this function does is the following. If both strings are equal, return 0. Otherwise find the posi-
tion between two bytes with the property that before it both strings are equal, while directly after it
there is a difference. Find the largest consecutive digit strings containing (or starting at, or ending
at) this position. If one or both of these is empty, then return what strcmp() would have returned
(numerical ordering of byte values). Otherwise, compare both digit strings numerically, where digit
strings with one or more leading zeroes are interpreted as if they have a decimal point in front (so
that in particular digit strings with more leading zeroes come before digit strings with fewer leading
zeroes). Thus, the ordering is 000, 00, 01, 010, 09, 0, 1, 9, 10.