Describe the Problem

On 3/2/2023, @robdarvell from the UK Met Office reported some unexpected behavior when configuring METplus to verify 10 or more variables. He's found that rather than processing the variables in numeric order (i.e. VAR1, VAR2, ..., VAR10, VAR11), they are processed in the alphabetic order (i.e. VAR1, VAR10, VAR11, VAR2, VAR3, ..., VAR9). This issue became apparent when defining the corresponding list of climatology fields. He defined them to match the presumed numeric variable number order, but ultimately had to reorder them to match this unexpected alphabetic order.

Once fixed, recommend requesting that @robdarvell test to confirm it.

Expected Behavior

Please replicate and confirm this unexpected processing order for 10 or more variables. Fix this behavior to define the variables in numeric order rather than alphabetic order.

Environment

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2. OS: (e.g. RedHat Linux, MacOS)
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To Reproduce

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