In the world of Linux, the sort
command is a powerful tool that allows you to sort records or lines of text. Whether you have a text file with a jumbled list of names, or you want to sort the output of another command, sort
has got you covered.
Let’s start with a simple example. Suppose you have a text file that contains the names of dogs:
Spot
Rusty
Fido
Max
To sort these names in alphabetical order, you can use the sort
command:
sort file.txt
The resulting output will be:
Fido
Max
Rusty
Spot
Fantastic! But what if you want to sort in reverse order? Easy peasy! Just add the -r
option:
sort -r file.txt
Now, the names will be displayed in reverse alphabetical order:
Spot
Rusty
Max
Fido
By default, sort
performs a case-sensitive and alphabetic sort. However, if you want to sort case-insensitive, you can use the --ignore-case
option:
sort --ignore-case file.txt
Now, names like “Fido” and “fido” will be considered the same for sorting purposes.
In addition, the -n
option allows you to sort using a numeric order instead of the default alphabetic order. For example, suppose you have a file with the following numbers:
9
10
5
2
To sort them numerically, you can use the following command:
sort -n file.txt
The output will be:
2
5
9
10
But what if your text file contains duplicates? No worries! The sort
command provides the -u
option, which removes duplicate lines from the output:
sort -u file.txt
Now, if you had duplicate names in your file, they would be eliminated.
Remember, sort
can do more than just operate on files. Like many other Linux commands, it can also work with pipes. For instance, you can sort the files returned by the ls
command by piping the output to sort
:
ls | sort
This will display the sorted list of files.
The sort
command offers numerous other options and features. To explore them in detail, you can refer to the manual by running man sort
in your terminal.
One great thing about sort
is its wide compatibility. It works not only on Linux systems, but also on macOS, Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL), and any UNIX environment.
So go ahead and unleash the power of the sort
command to bring order to your text data.