Ignore non-numeric characters in numbers for DataTables sort - datatables

Question

I'm creating a custom sort plugin for DataTables which will sort numeric columns which contain non-numeric rows as well. I got the part where it puts the 'N/A' rows at the bottom but cannot seem to figure out, how to make it ignore the commas in the numbers.
For example:
$12,443.00
362,123,231
N/A
N/A
null
34,242.42
23,234
null
The code below manages to ignore everything except for the commas in the numbers.
Code:
function numeric_sort(a, b, high) {
var reg = /[+-]?((\d+(\.\d*)?)|\.\d+)([eE][+-]?[0-9]+)?/;
a = a.match(reg);
a = a !== null ? parseFloat(a[0]) : high;
b = b.match(reg);
b = b !== null ? parseFloat(b[0]) : high;
return ((a < b) ? -1 : ((a > b) ? 1 : 0));
}
jQuery.extend( jQuery.fn.dataTableExt.oSort, {
"numeric-empty-bottom-asc": function (a, b) {
return numeric_sort(a, b, Number.POSITIVE_INFINITY);
},
"numeric-empty-bottom-desc": function (a, b) {
return numeric_sort(a, b, Number.NEGATIVE_INFINITY) * -1;
}
} );
I got the code from: http://jsfiddle.net/6qmkY/
Any help will be appreciated.

Answer 1

You can just use replace() to remove commas.
function sortNumbersIgnoreText(a, b, high) {
var reg = /[+-]?((\d+(\.\d*)?)|\.\d+)([eE][+-]?[0-9]+)?/;
a = a.replace(/,/g, '');
a = a.match(reg);
a = a !== null ? parseFloat(a[0]) : high;
b = b.replace(/,/g, '');
b = b.match(reg);
b = b !== null ? parseFloat(b[0]) : high;
return ((a < b) ? -1 : ((a > b) ? 1 : 0));
}
See updated jsFiddle for code and demonstration.

Answer 2

You could replace all non numeric chars including commas (excluding the decimal).
function sortNumbersIgnoreText(a, b, high) {
a = a.replace(/[^0-9\.]+/g, '');
a = (a !== null && a !== '') ? parseFloat(a) : high;
b = b.replace(/[^0-9\.]+/g, '');
b = (b !== null && b !== '') ? parseFloat(b) : high;
return ((a < b) ? -1 : ((a > b) ? 1 : 0));
}