Sorting alphanumeric column in datatables doesent work

Question

I have some problem to sort a column in jquery data table.

I want to sort the first column ascending/descending.

This is some data from the column (default sorted by desc):

R949
R923
R909
R594
R559
R1017

AS you can see the default Sorting algorithm doesn't work with alphanumeric characters.

This are my settings:

$('#myTable').dataTable({
            "aaSorting": [[0, "desc"]],
            "paging": false,
            "lengthChange": false,
            "searching": true,
            "ordering": true,
            "info": true,
            "autoWidth": false
)}

my wish descending result:

R1017
R949
R923
R909
R594
R559

Anybody have some hint what I do wrong? I also tried to use

"columnDefs": [
{"type": "natural", "targets": 0 }]

But this also doesn't work

Answer 1

The string your are yousing is calculated:

R0xxxxx < R1xxxxx < R2xxxxxx < R3xxxxx < R4xxxxx < R5xxxxx etc ...

You need to do natural sort:

function naturalSort(a, b) {
        var ax = [], bx = [];

        a.replace(/(\d+)|(\D+)/g, function(_, $1, $2) { ax.push([$1 || Infinity, $2 || ""]) });
        b.replace(/(\d+)|(\D+)/g, function(_, $1, $2) { bx.push([$1 || Infinity, $2 || ""]) });
        
        while(ax.length && bx.length) {
            var an = ax.shift();
            var bn = bx.shift();
            var nn = (an[0] - bn[0]) || an[1].localeCompare(bn[1]);
            if(nn) return nn;
        }

        return ax.length - bx.length;
    }

    test = [
    "R12",
    "R10",
    "R2",
    "R1",
    "R101",
    "R101",
    "R10"
];

    test.sort(naturalSort);
    document.write("<pre>" + JSON.stringify(test,0,3));