Thursday, August 16, 2007

Sort Manual

SORT(1)                          User Commands                         SORT(1)



NAME
sort - sort lines of text files

SYNOPSIS
sort [OPTION]... [FILE]...

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

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’ -n, --numeric-sort compare according to string numerical value -r, --reverse reverse the result of comparisons Other options: -c, --check check whether input is sorted; do not sort -k, --key=POS1[,POS2] start a key at POS1, end it at POS2 (origin 1) -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 -u, --unique with -c, check for strict ordering; without -c, output only the first of an equal run -z, --zero-terminated end lines with 0 byte, not newline --help display this help and exit --version output version information and exit POS is F[.C][OPTS], where F is the field number and C the character position in the field. OPTS is one or more single-letter ordering options, which override global ordering options for that key. If no key is given, use the entire line as the key. 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. With no FILE, or when FILE is -, read standard input. *** 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 Written by Mike Haertel and Paul Eggert. REPORTING BUGS Report bugs to .

COPYRIGHT
Copyright © 2005 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
This is free software. You may redistribute copies of it under the
terms of the GNU General Public License
. There is NO WARRANTY, to the
extent permitted by law.

SEE ALSO
The full documentation for sort is maintained as a Texinfo manual. If
the info and sort programs are properly installed at your site, the
command

info sort

should give you access to the complete manual.



sort 5.93 May 2006 SORT(1)