Command line to sort semi-colon delimited string

Question

I'm sure there's a simple solution eluding me... I have an app which stores sets as a string like:
"bee;ant;cow;ant;Aardvark;dog"
which I want to sort to a string like:
"Ardvark;ant;bee;cow;dog"
...where letter sort** is case insensitive and number strings sort on numberical value (i.e. 1,2,10 not 1,10,2). FWIW, the string length is likely to be short and not large numbers of delimited terms - in case that matters.
** I can duck issue of sorting & accented characters if that's a significant complication at this point.
The app in question can't do the sort but can call a Unix command line and read its stdout. I want a single command line not an external script for portability/support reasons, though it doesn't matter if the CL is long. So, please don't suggest I use a script even if it's your own preferred method!
I thought of using 'sort' but that's for lines in a file vs a single input line. I guess I use awk, or can a pass perl as a CL (as opposed to calling a script)? Either way, my poring over the references I have hasn't showed me a solution and I don't know perl. Here's hoping someone can point me in the right direction.
TIA
Mark

Answer 1

Here's one way to accomplish what you're asking:set stuff2Sort to "bee;ant;cow;ant;Aardvark;dog;1;10;2"
set sortedStuff to sortStuff(stuff2Sort)
on sortStuff(x)
set tmpSort to paragraphs of (do shell script "echo " & quoted form of x & " | awk 'gsub(\"",\"\\n\") {print}' | sort -g")
set oldDelims to text item delimiters
set text item delimiters to ";"
set theSorted to tmpSort as string
set text item delimiters to oldDelims
return theSorted
end sortStuffI don't know if the ";" and "\" are appearing correctly or not. When I preview this post it shows up as a smiley face even though I have it in a code block!
Hope this helps...
Message was edited by: Chachi
Sorry, thought I was in the Applescript forum! DOH!!!