一种选择是将字符串转换为元组，并使用展开形式http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_does_expanded_form_mean替换数字

这样a90就会变成("a"，90,0)而a1就会变成("a"，1)

下面是一些示例代码(这不是很有效，因为它从数字中删除前导0的方式)

alist=["something1",
    "something12",
    "something17",
    "something2",
    "something25and_then_33",
    "something25and_then_34",
    "something29",
    "beta1.1",
    "beta2.3.0",
    "beta2.33.1",
    "a001",
    "a2",
    "z002",
    "z1"]

def key(k):
    nums=set(list("0123456789"))
        chars=set(list(k))
    chars=chars-nums
    for i in range(len(k)):
        for c in chars:
            k=k.replace(c+"0",c)
    l=list(k)
    base=10
    j=0
    for i in range(len(l)-1,-1,-1):
        try:
            l[i]=int(l[i])*base**j
            j+=1
        except:
            j=0
    l=tuple(l)
    print l
    return l

print sorted(alist,key=key)

输出:

('s', 'o', 'm', 'e', 't', 'h', 'i', 'n', 'g', 1)
('s', 'o', 'm', 'e', 't', 'h', 'i', 'n', 'g', 10, 2)
('s', 'o', 'm', 'e', 't', 'h', 'i', 'n', 'g', 10, 7)
('s', 'o', 'm', 'e', 't', 'h', 'i', 'n', 'g', 2)
('s', 'o', 'm', 'e', 't', 'h', 'i', 'n', 'g', 20, 5, 'a', 'n', 'd', '_', 't', 'h', 'e', 'n', '_', 30, 3)
('s', 'o', 'm', 'e', 't', 'h', 'i', 'n', 'g', 20, 5, 'a', 'n', 'd', '_', 't', 'h', 'e', 'n', '_', 30, 4)
('s', 'o', 'm', 'e', 't', 'h', 'i', 'n', 'g', 20, 9)
('b', 'e', 't', 'a', 1, '.', 1)
('b', 'e', 't', 'a', 2, '.', 3, '.')
('b', 'e', 't', 'a', 2, '.', 30, 3, '.', 1)
('a', 1)
('a', 2)
('z', 2)
('z', 1)
['a001', 'a2', 'beta1.1', 'beta2.3.0', 'beta2.33.1', 'something1', 'something2', 'something12', 'something17', 'something25and_then_33', 'something25and_then_34', 'something29', 'z1', 'z002']

a = ['H1', 'H100', 'H10', 'H3', 'H2', 'H6', 'H11', 'H50', 'H5', 'H99', 'H8']
b = ''
c = []

def bubble(bad_list):#bubble sort method
        length = len(bad_list) - 1
        sorted = False

        while not sorted:
                sorted = True
                for i in range(length):
                        if bad_list[i] > bad_list[i+1]:
                                sorted = False
                                bad_list[i], bad_list[i+1] = bad_list[i+1], bad_list[i] #sort the integer list 
                                a[i], a[i+1] = a[i+1], a[i] #sort the main list based on the integer list index value

for a_string in a: #extract the number in the string character by character
        for letter in a_string:
                if letter.isdigit():
                        #print letter
                        b += letter
        c.append(b)
        b = ''

print 'Before sorting....'
print a
c = map(int, c) #converting string list into number list
print c
bubble(c)

print 'After sorting....'
print c
print a

应答:

气泡排序作业

如何在python中一次读一个字母的字符串

这是一个更高级的解决方案，由Claudiu和Mark Byers改进:

它使用casefold()而不是lower()来匹配字符串 您可以传递另一个键lambda来选择一个内部元素(就像您习惯使用普通排序函数一样) 它当然适用于列表。Sort, sorted, max，等等。

def natural_sort(key=None, _nsre=re.compile('([0-9]+)')):
    return lambda x: [int(text) if text.isdigit() else text.casefold()
            for text in _nsre.split(key(x) if key else x)]

使用示例:

# Original solution
data.sort(key=natural_sort)

# Select an additional key
image_files.sort(key=natural_sort(lambda x: x.original_filename))

克劳狄对马克·拜尔斯的回答的改进;-)

import re

def natural_sort_key(s, _re=re.compile(r'(\d+)')):
    return [int(t) if i & 1 else t.lower() for i, t in enumerate(_re.split(s))]

...
my_naturally_sorted_list = sorted(my_list, key=natural_sort_key)

顺便说一句，也许不是每个人都记得函数参数默认值是在def时求值的

>>> import re
>>> sorted(lst, key=lambda x: int(re.findall(r'\d+$', x)[0]))
['elm0', 'elm1', 'Elm2', 'elm9', 'elm10', 'Elm11', 'Elm12', 'elm13']

我建议您简单地使用关键字参数sorted来实现所需的列表 例如:

to_order= [e2,E1,e5,E4,e3]
ordered= sorted(to_order, key= lambda x: x.lower())
    # ordered should be [E1,e2,e3,E4,e5]