Sort a file in alphabetical order $ cat phonebook Smith, Brett 555-4321 Doe, John 555-1234 Doe, Jane 555-3214 Avery, Cory 555-4132 Fogarty, Suzie 555-2314 $ sort phonebook Avery, Cory 555-4132 Doe, Jane 555-3214 Doe, John 555-1234 Fogarty, Suzie 555-2314 Smith, Brett 555-4321
Sort by number The -n option makes the program sort according to numerical value. The command produces output that starts with a number, the file size, so its output can be piped to to produce a list of files sorted by (ascending) file size: $ du /bin/* | sort -n 4 /bin/domainname 24 /bin/ls 102 /bin/sh 304 /bin/csh The command with the option prints file sizes in the 7th field, so a list of the files sorted by file size is produced by: $ find . -name "*.tex" -ls | sort -k 7n
Columns or fields Use the -k option to sort on a certain column. For example, use "-k 2" to sort on the second column. In old versions of sort, the +1 option made the program sort on the second column of data (+2 for the third, etc.). This usage is deprecated. $ cat zipcode Adam 12345 Bob 34567 Joe 56789 Sam 45678 Wendy 23456 $ sort -k 2n zipcode Adam 12345 Wendy 23456 Bob 34567 Sam 45678 Joe 56789
Sort on multiple fields The -k m,n option lets you sort on a key that is potentially composed of multiple fields (start at column m, end at column n): $ cat quota fred 2000 bob 1000 an 1000 chad 1000 don 1500 eric 500 $ sort -k2,2n -k1,1 quota eric 500 an 1000 bob 1000 chad 1000 don 1500 fred 2000 Here the first sort is done using column 2. -k2,2n specifies sorting on the key starting and ending with column 2, and sorting numerically. If -k2 is used instead, the sort key would begin at column 2 and extend to the end of the line, spanning all the fields in between. -k1,1 dictates breaking ties using the value in column 1, sorting alphabetically by default. Note that bob, and chad have the same quota and are sorted alphabetically in the final output.
Sorting a pipe delimited file $ sort -k2,2,-k1,1 -t'|' zipcode Adam|12345 Wendy|23456 Sam|45678 Joe|56789 Bob|34567
Sorting a tab delimited file Sorting a file with
tab separated values requires a
tab character to be specified as the column delimiter. This illustration uses the shell's dollar-quote notation to specify the tab as a
C escape sequence. $ sort -k2,2 -t $'\t' phonebook Doe, John 555-1234 Fogarty, Suzie 555-2314 Doe, Jane 555-3214 Avery, Cory 555-4132 Smith, Brett 555-4321
Sort in reverse The -r option just reverses the order of the sort: $ sort -rk 2n zipcode Joe 56789 Sam 45678 Bob 34567 Wendy 23456 Adam 12345
Sort in random The GNU implementation has a -R --random-sort option based on hashing; this is not a full random shuffle because it will sort identical lines together. A true random sort is provided by the Unix utility
shuf.
Sort by version The GNU implementation has a -V --version-sort option which is a natural sort of (version) numbers within text. Two text strings that are to be compared are split into blocks of letters and blocks of digits. Blocks of letters are compared alpha-numerically, and blocks of digits are compared numerically (i.e., skipping leading zeros, more digits means larger, otherwise the leftmost digits that differ determine the result). Blocks are compared left-to-right and the first non-equal block in that loop decides which text is larger. This happens to work for IP addresses, Debian package version strings and similar tasks where numbers of variable length are embedded in strings. ==See also==