The ‘sort’ is a commonly used Linux command for sorting lines of text files.
Sorting a file in alphabetical order
sort filename.txt
This command will sort the contents of the ‘filename.txt’ file in alphabetical order and display it on the terminal.
Sorting a file in reverse alphabetical order
sort -r filename.txt
The ‘-r’ flag is used to reverse the order. So, this command will sort the contents of the ‘filename.txt’ file in reverse alphabetical order and display it on the terminal.
Sorting a file numerically
sort -n numbers.txt
If the file contains numbers, you can use the ‘-n’ flag to sort them numerically.
Sorting a file in reverse numerical order
sort -nr numbers.txt
This will sort the contents of the ‘numbers.txt’ file in reverse numerical order.
Sorting a file based on the second column
sort -k 2 filename.txt
If the file contains multiple columns or fields, you can sort based on a particular field by specifying the column number or character position using the ‘-k’ flag. In this example, the file will be sorted based on the second column.
Sorting a file based on a delimited field
sort -t , -k 2 filename.csv
If the file is comma-separated, you can specify the delimiter using the ‘-t’ flag. In this example, the file will be sorted based on the second column which is delimited by commas.
Sorting only unique lines from a file
sort -u filename.txt
You can use the ‘-u’ flag to sort only the unique lines from a file.
Sorting a file without considering case
sort -f filename.txt
The ‘-f’ flag can be used to sort a file without considering case.
Merging two sorted files
sort -m file1.txt file2.txt
You can merge two sorted files into one sorted file using the ‘-m’ flag.
Sorting files in a directory based on filename
ls | sort
You can sort the contents of a directory based on filename by piping the output of the ‘ls’ command to the ‘sort’ command.