This is a small tutorial on how to use sort command to sort a file for some meaning full output. Sorting is very much useful when dealing with DB files, CSV, xls, log files in fact a text file to. By default sort command will sort according to alpha-bates. First sort tries to sort according to single character virtically in the file, if it finds a character is same in two lines, then it move on to sort second character. Suppose I have a following word list in a file

cat filename.txt

abc
cde
hij
klm
kle
ble

This will be sorted first with first char. When it finds both the char same in this example klm and kle start with same characters, so it tries to sort with third character which are different in those two lines. The output of sort  as below

sort filename.txt

abc

ble
cde
hij
kle
klm

Sort command syntax

sort filename.txt

Example1: Sort a given file according to alpha-bates

sort filename.txt

Example2: I have a file with host names in third column, how can I sort them according to this column(according to hostname)?. Use -k for sorting according to column(kolumn)

sort -k3 filename.txt

The above command will sort according to third column.

Example3:I want to sort /etc/passwd file according to home directories but my sort is not working how can I sort them? By default sort will take space/tabs as field separators. But in /etc/passwd file the field separator is : so we have to mention this one when sorting a file. This can be done with -t option

sort -t: -k6 /etc/passwd

Example4: I want to sort according to number, suppose I want to sort /etc/passwd file according to UID, use -n option to do that. Again sort will not understand numbers by default, we have to use -n to make sure sort command understand it.

sort -n -t: -k3 /etc/passwd

Note: For example with out -n option sort will put 10 before 3 when it find this values, by default it will sort only first numerical char.

Example5: Sort the file and reverse the order

sort -r filename.txt

Example6: Some times it’s required to sort the file and display only uniq values.

sort -u filename

Note: though the values on other field are different this will not consider by -u option.

Example7: I want to sort a file according to my requirement and save it to a different file. Use -o option to save the sorted output to a file.

sort -o temp.txt filename.txt

Example8: Do you have file content with sizes like 10K, 20G, 45M, 32T etc. You can sort accourding to human readable by using -h option. This option works RHEL5 and above versions.

sort -h filename.txt

Similar to above example we can use -m for sorting according to month of the year.

sort -M filename.txt

Example9: Check if the file is alrady in sorted format or not by using -c option. This option will show you what is the first occurence disorderd value.

sort -c filename.txt

You can now mix above options to get your sorting work done.

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Surendra Anne

Mr Surendra Anne is from Vijayawada, Andhra Pradesh, India. He is a Linux/Open source supporter who believes in Hard work, A down to earth person, Likes to share knowledge with others, Loves dogs, Likes photography. He works as Devops Engineer with Taggle systems, an IOT automatic water metering company, Sydney . You can contact him at surendra (@) linuxnix dot com.