Sorting out a list alphabetically then ascending

Question

Imagine I have a list with the following values:

{"abc","04","bca","10","cba","11","01"}

if I use normal c# OrderBy() on the list it will result in this:

{"01","04","10","11","abc","bca","cba"}

but what I intend is a bit the opposite:

{"abc","bca","cba","01","04","10","11"}

How can I achieve this?

Answer 1

What about below solution,

var input = new List<string>(){"abc","04","bca","10","cba","11","01"};
var result = input.OrderBy(x => x.All(Char.IsDigit));

//You can further sort it, using `ThenBy()`
var result = input.OrderBy(x => x.All(Char.IsDigit)).ThenBy(x => x);

Try Online

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Explaination:

• x.All(Char.IsDigit) returns true if the all characters are digits. Otherwise it return false.

• As we are writing it as a predicate, OrderBy() will sort the list based on the result of .All().

• All false values will come first(In our case, non numeric strings) and all numeric strings will sort at the end

Answer 2

You could split the list by Regex into two lists, alphabet and numerical, then sort and then join them again.