Back in our NOTIS days, we had need of call number sorted output.
NOTIS falling woefully short in that department, I came up with a
call number normalizing routine. Feed in a call number, get an
array of call number pieces in return. Push the results through
the sort of your choice. This exists in Perl nowadays, and
might make it to CPAN one of these days.

There are other things, but they might be more application specific.

Roy Zimmer----->OIT----->Library Stuff & Other things----->
Western Michigan University----->Kalamazoo, Michigan USA
localsystem=P3  ICBM=(%Fatal:GPS error 51)  RF=KB8UBA  AF="Hey you!" QRM!
[log in to unmask] you go, there you are!