Patent ID: 7765219

Claim:
A computer-implemented sort order engine, comprising: a processor that executes the following computer-executable components stored in memory to sort text strings in accordance with a specified collation, including: a normalization component that: accesses a plurality of data strings, each data string including a sequence of characters, the characters selected from among numeric and alphabetic characters; for each data string in the plurality of data strings: parses the data string into a series of adjacent numeric tokens and alphabetic tokens, the numeric tokens including adjacent numeric characters and the alphabetic tokens including adjacent alphabetic characters; for each numeric token in the data string: count the number of significant digits in the numeric token, the count of the number of significant digits indicating the length of the numeric token, the count ignoring any leading zeroes of the numeric token; and pre-pends a numeric value representing the count of the number of significant digit in the numeric token to the numeric token by inserting the numeric value into the data string prior and adjacent to the numeric token within the data string such that one or more of the numeric value and numeric token to sort the data string, wherein the numeric value sorts numeric token based on the length of the numeric token without having to re-parse the numeric token; and a collation component that sorts the plurality of data strings in accordance with the specified collation based at least in part on the length of the numeric tokens included in the pre-pend numeric values.