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HTML rendering created 2025-09-06 by Michael Kerrisk, author of The Linux Programming Interface. For details of in-depth Linux/UNIX system programming training courses that I teach, look here. Hosting by jambit GmbH. |
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NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | AUTHOR | REPORTING BUGS | COPYRIGHT | SEE ALSO | COLOPHON |
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SORT(1) User Commands SORT(1)
sort - sort lines of text files
sort [OPTION]... [FILE]...
sort [OPTION]... --files0-from=F
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; see full
documentation for supported strings
-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
output only the first of lines with equal keys; with -c,
check for strict ordering
-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.
Written by Mike Haertel and Paul Eggert.
GNU coreutils online help:
<https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/>
Report any translation bugs to
<https://translationproject.org/team/>
Copyright © 2025 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.
shuf(1), uniq(1)
Full documentation <https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/sort>
or available locally via: info '(coreutils) sort invocation'
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-9.7.tar.xz fetched from
⟨http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/coreutils/⟩ on 2025-08-11. 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 9.7 April 2025 SORT(1)
Pages that refer to this page: column(1), grep(1), look(1), prlimit(1), ps(1), sortman(1), uniq(1), qsort(3), strverscmp(3), environ(7), rpmsort(8)
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HTML rendering created 2025-09-06 by Michael Kerrisk, author of The Linux Programming Interface. For details of in-depth Linux/UNIX system programming training courses that I teach, look here. Hosting by jambit GmbH. |
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