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How to sort lines of text files in Linux?
To sort lines of text files, we use the sort command in the Linux system.
The sort command is used to prints the lines of its input or concatenation of all files listed in its argument list in sorted order. The operation of sorting is done based on one or more sort keys extracted from each line of input. By default, the entire input is taken as the sort key.
Syntax
The general syntax of the sort command is as follows.
sort [OPTION]... [FILE]... sort [OPTION]... --files0-from=F
Brief description of options available in the sort command.
| Sr.No. | Option & Description |
|---|---|
| 1 | -b, --ignore-leading-blanks Ignore leading blanks. |
| 2 | -d, --dictionary-order Consider only blanks and alphanumeric characters. |
| 3 | -f, --ignore-case Fold lower case to upper case characters. |
| 4 | -g, --general-numeric-sort Compare according to general numerical value. |
| 5 | -i, --ignore-nonprinting Consider only printable characters. |
| 6 | -M, --month-sort Compare (unknown) <’JAN’ <...<’DEC’. |
| 7 | -h, --human-numeric-sord Compare human-readable numbers. |
| 8 | -n, --numeric-sort Compare according to string numerical value. |
| 9 | --random-source=FILE Get random bytes from the FILE. |
| 10 | -r, --reverse Reverse the result of comparisons. |
| 11 | --sort=WORD Sort according to the WORD. |
| 12 | --help Display this help and exit |
| 13 | --version Output version information and exit. |
Here, we will create a file using the cat command and sort this file using the sort command in the Linux system.
$ cat >text.txt Sid Vikash Gaurav ^C $ sort text.txt Gaurav Sid Vikash
Here, we will sort a file in the reverse order using the -r or --reverse option with the sort command in the Linux operating system.
$ cat >text.txt Sid Vikash Gaurav ^C $ sort text.txt Vikash Sid Gaurav
In the above example, we already saw that how can we sort a file but output of the sort command on standard output. Here, we will save output into a new file in the file system.
$ sort text.txt > newtext.txt
After executing the above command, a new file will be created with the newtext.txt name.
To check more information and options with descriptions about the sort command, we use the --help option with the sort command as shown below.
$ sort --help
To check in which version the sort command is working, we use the --version option with the sort command in the Linux system as shown below.
$ sort --version
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