How to sort complicated strings in shell?

Question

I have to sort cell names like this (no matters if it comes from a file or a variable): expected result

BAR.A1
BAR.A1-1
BAR.A2
BAR.A3
BAR.A10
FOO.A1
FOO.B1
FOO.B1-1

What I tried results in this wrong order :

BAR.A1
BAR.B1
BAR.B1-1
FOO.A1
FOO.A10 <--- wrong place
FOO.A1-1
FOO.A2
FOO.A3

I tried many combinaisons of

sort -n
sort -h
sort -d

none works.

Any clue ?

Answer 1

perl -MSort::Key::Natural=natsort -e'print for natsort <>'

See Specifying file to process to Perl one-liner for usage.

Answer 2

version sort

$ sort -V file

BAR.A1
BAR.B1
BAR.B1-1
FOO.A1
FOO.A2
FOO.A3
FOO.A10
FOO.A1-1

updated based on clarified question

$ sort -t- -k1,1V -k2 file

BAR.A1
BAR.B1
BAR.B1-1
FOO.A1
FOO.A1-1
FOO.A2
FOO.A3
FOO.A10

Answer 3

It looks like you want to sort by field 1 alphabetically, then field 2 version-wise

sort -t. -k 1,1 -k2,2V <<END
FOO.A1
FOO.A1-1
FOO.A2
FOO.A3
FOO.A10
BAR.A1
BAR.B1
BAR.B1-1
END

BAR.A1
BAR.B1
BAR.B1-1
FOO.A1
FOO.A1-1
FOO.A2
FOO.A3
FOO.A10

Answer 4

There are still various unclear points (you are not saying exactly the output you want) but sort -g should do it:

$ cat s.txt
FOO.A1
FOO.A1-1
FOO.A2
FOO.A3
FOO.A10
BAR.A1
BAR.B1
BAR.B1-1
$ sort -g s.txt
BAR.A1
BAR.B1
BAR.B1-1
FOO.A1
FOO.A1-1
FOO.A10
FOO.A2
FOO.A3

-g is defined as such:

-g, --general-numeric-sort, --sort=general-numeric Sort by general numerical value. As opposed to -n, this option handles general floating points. It has a more permissive format than that allowed by -n but it has a significant performance drawback.

But -n would fit here as well, so your desired output is not clear.

Based on your further updates, maybe this is what you want:

$ sort -t '.' -k 2 -V < s.txt
BAR.A1
FOO.A1
FOO.A1-1
FOO.A2
FOO.A3
FOO.A10
BAR.B1
BAR.B1-1