[Marha01]

Why is the author so perplexed by it?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_sort_order

It's simply natural sorting. I don't see what is so controversial about it.

[lblume]

I find the term "natural" to be inadequate here, there is nothing natural about sorting strings in this particular fashion compared to another. It should be given a more descriptive name, like "Number-aware alphabetic" or something like that as to actually give a hint about what it does.