MongoDB version 4.4 introduces a new operator, $natural, which is used in a cursor.hint() operation. This operator causes the results of a sort operation to return a list in natural (also called human-readable) order. As an example, take these values:
['file19.txt','file10.txt','file20.txt','file8.txt']
An ordinary sort would return the list in this order:
['file10.txt','file19.txt','file20.txt','file8.txt']
Whereas a natural sort would return the following:
['file8.txt','file10.txt','file19.txt','file20.txt']