[pbw]

"I created the Alphanum Algorithm to solve this problem. The Alphanum Algorithm sorts strings containing a mix of letters and numbers. Given strings of mixed characters and numbers, it sorts the numbers in value order, while sorting the non-numbers in ASCII order. The end result is a natural sorting order."

https://web.archive.org/web/20210207124255/http://www.daveko...

[JoshTriplett]

There are many older instances of that, such as "versionsort" from various Linux tools and libraries. I think this has likely been independently recreated several times, with various subtle differences.