sort(1) — Linux manual page

NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | AUTHOR | REPORTING BUGS | COPYRIGHT | SEE ALSO | COLOPHON

SORT(1)                       User Commands                      SORT(1)

NAME         top

       sort - sort lines of text files

SYNOPSIS         top

       sort [OPTION]... [FILE]...
       sort [OPTION]... --files0-from=F

DESCRIPTION         top

       Write sorted concatenation of all FILE(s) to standard output.

       With no FILE, or when FILE is -, read standard input.

       Mandatory arguments to long options are mandatory for short
       options too.  Ordering options:

       -b, --ignore-leading-blanks
              ignore leading blanks

       -d, --dictionary-order
              consider only blanks and alphanumeric characters

       -f, --ignore-case
              fold lower case to upper case characters

       -g, --general-numeric-sort
              compare according to general numerical value

       -i, --ignore-nonprinting
              consider only printable characters

       -M, --month-sort
              compare (unknown) < 'JAN' < ... < 'DEC'

       -h, --human-numeric-sort
              compare human readable numbers (e.g., 2K 1G)

       -n, --numeric-sort
              compare according to string numerical value

       -R, --random-sort
              shuffle, but group identical keys.  See shuf(1)

       --random-source=FILE
              get random bytes from FILE

       -r, --reverse
              reverse the result of comparisons

       --sort=WORD
              sort according to WORD: general-numeric -g, human-numeric
              -h, month -M, numeric -n, random -R, version -V

       -V, --version-sort
              natural sort of (version) numbers within text

       Other options:

       --batch-size=NMERGE
              merge at most NMERGE inputs at once; for more use temp
              files

       -c, --check, --check=diagnose-first
              check for sorted input; do not sort

       -C, --check=quiet, --check=silent
              like -c, but do not report first bad line

       --compress-program=PROG
              compress temporaries with PROG; decompress them with PROG
              -d

       --debug
              annotate the part of the line used to sort, and warn about
              questionable usage to stderr

       --files0-from=F
              read input from the files specified by NUL-terminated
              names in file F; If F is - then read names from standard
              input

       -k, --key=KEYDEF
              sort via a key; KEYDEF gives location and type

       -m, --merge
              merge already sorted files; do not sort

       -o, --output=FILE
              write result to FILE instead of standard output

       -s, --stable
              stabilize sort by disabling last-resort comparison

       -S, --buffer-size=SIZE
              use SIZE for main memory buffer

       -t, --field-separator=SEP
              use SEP instead of non-blank to blank transition

       -T, --temporary-directory=DIR
              use DIR for temporaries, not $TMPDIR or /tmp; multiple
              options specify multiple directories

       --parallel=N
              change the number of sorts run concurrently to N

       -u, --unique
              with -c, check for strict ordering; without -c, output
              only the first of an equal run

       -z, --zero-terminated
              line delimiter is NUL, not newline

       --help display this help and exit

       --version
              output version information and exit

       KEYDEF is F[.C][OPTS][,F[.C][OPTS]] for start and stop position,
       where F is a field number and C a character position in the
       field; both are origin 1, and the stop position defaults to the
       line's end.  If neither -t nor -b is in effect, characters in a
       field are counted from the beginning of the preceding whitespace.
       OPTS is one or more single-letter ordering options [bdfgiMhnRrV],
       which override global ordering options for that key.  If no key
       is given, use the entire line as the key.  Use --debug to
       diagnose incorrect key usage.

       SIZE may be followed by the following multiplicative suffixes: %
       1% of memory, b 1, K 1024 (default), and so on for M, G, T, P, E,
       Z, Y, R, Q.

       *** WARNING *** The locale specified by the environment affects
       sort order.  Set LC_ALL=C to get the traditional sort order that
       uses native byte values.

AUTHOR         top

       Written by Mike Haertel and Paul Eggert.

REPORTING BUGS         top

       GNU coreutils online help:
       <https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/>
       Report any translation bugs to
       <https://translationproject.org/team/>

COPYRIGHT         top

       Copyright © 2023 Free Software Foundation, Inc.  License GPLv3+:
       GNU GPL version 3 or later <https://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>.
       This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute
       it.  There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.

SEE ALSO         top

       shuf(1), uniq(1)

       Full documentation <https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/sort>
       or available locally via: info '(coreutils) sort invocation'

COLOPHON         top

       This page is part of the coreutils (basic file, shell and text
       manipulation utilities) project.  Information about the project
       can be found at ⟨http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/⟩.  If you
       have a bug report for this manual page, see
       ⟨http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/⟩.  This page was obtained
       from the tarball coreutils-9.4.tar.xz fetched from
       ⟨http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/coreutils/⟩ on 2023-12-22.  If you
       discover any rendering problems in this HTML version of the page,
       or you believe there is a better or more up-to-date source for
       the page, or you have corrections or improvements to the
       information in this COLOPHON (which is not part of the original
       manual page), send a mail to man-pages@man7.org

GNU coreutils 9.4              August 2023                       SORT(1)

Pages that refer to this page: column(1)grep(1)look(1)prlimit(1)ps(1)uniq(1)qsort(3)environ(7)