$natural¶

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Definition
Behavior
Examples
Additional Information

Definition¶

$natural¶

Use the $natural operator to use natural order for the results of a sort operation. Natural order refers to the logical ordering of documents internally within the database.

The $natural operator uses the following syntax to return documents in the order they exist on disk:

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db.collection.find().sort( { $natural: 1 } )

Behavior¶

On a sharded collection the $natural operator returns a collection scan sorted in natural order, the order the database inserts and stores documents on disk.

Queries that include a sort by $natural order do not use indexes to fulfill the query predicate with the following exception: If the query predicate is an equality condition on the _id field { _id: <value> }, then the query with the sort by $natural order can use the _id index.

You cannot specify $natural sort order if the query includes a $text expression.

Examples¶

Reverse Order¶

Use { $natural: -1 } to return documents in the reverse order as they occur on disk:

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db.collection.find().sort( { $natural: -1 } )

Additional Information¶

cursor.sort()

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