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sort(1)
NAME
sort - Sorts or merges files
SYNOPSIS
sort [-m] [-o output_file] [-Abdfinru] [-k keydef]... [-t character] [-T
directory] [-y] [kilobytes] [-z record_size]... file...
sort -c [-u] [-Abdfinru] [-k keydef]... [-t character] [-T directory] [-y]
[kilobytes] [-z record_size]... file...
The following older syntax is now maintained for backward compatibility,
but may be withdrawn in future issues:
sort [-Abcdfimnru] [-o output_file] [-t character] [-T directory] [-y]
[kilobytes] [-z record_size] [+fskip] [.cskip] [-fskip] [.cskip]
[-bdfinr]... file...
STANDARDS
Interfaces documented on this reference page conform to industry standards
as follows:
sort: XCU5.0
Refer to the standards(5) reference page for more information about
industry standards and associated tags.
OPTIONS
The -d, -f, -i, -n, and -r options override the default ordering rules.
When ordering options appear independent of any key field specifications,
the requested field ordering rules are applied globally to all sort keys.
When attached to a specific key (see -k), the specified ordering options
override all global ordering options for that key. In the obsolescent
forms, if one or more of these options follows a +fskip option, it affects
only the key field specified by that preceding option.
-A [Tru64 UNIX] Sorts on a byte-by-byte basis using each character's
encoded value. On some systems, extended characters will be considered
negative values, and so sort before ASCII characters. If you are
sorting ASCII characters in a non-C/POSIX locale, this option performs
much faster.
-b Ignores leading spaces and tabs when determining the starting and
ending positions of a restricted sort key. If the -b option is
specified before the first -k option, the -b option is applied to all
-k options on the command line; otherwise, the -b option can be
independently attached to each -k field_start or field_end argument.
-c Checks that the input is sorted according to the ordering rules
specified in the options and the collating sequence of the current
locale. No output is produced; only the exit code is affected.
-d Specifies that only spaces and alphanumeric characters (according to
the current setting of LC_TYPE) are significant in comparisons.
-f Treats all lowercase characters as their uppercase equivalents
(according to the current setting of LC_TYPE) for the purposes of
comparison.
-i Sorts only by printable characters (according to the current setting of
LC_TYPE).
-k keydef
Specifies one or more (up to 50) restricted sort key field definitions.
This option replaces the obsolescent +fskip.cskip and -fskip.cskip
options. A field comprises a maximal sequence of non-separating
characters and, in the absence of the -t option, any preceding field
separator.
The format of a key field definition is as follows:
field_start[type][,field_end[type]]
The field_start and field_end arguments define a key field that is
restricted to a portion of the line, and type is a modifier specified
by b, d, f, i, n, r, or t. The b modifier behaves like the -b option,
but applies only to the field_start or field_end argument to which it
is attached. The t modifier indicates that the key field is processed
as CPU time. The other modifiers behave like their corresponding
options, but apply only to the key field to which they are attached;
these modifiers have this effect if specified with field_start,
field_end or both.
Modifiers attached to a field_start or field_end argument override any
specifications made by the options. A missing field_end argument means
the last character of the line. When multiple sort keys are specified,
it is advisable to specify a field_end argument to avoid possible
confusion.
The field_start portion of the keydef argument takes the following
form:
field_number[.first_character]
Fields and characters within fields are numbered starting with 1. The
field_number and first_character pieces, interpreted as positive
decimal integers, specify the character to be used as part of a sort
key. If first_character is not specified, the default is the first
character of the field.
The field_end portion of the keydef argument takes the following form:
field_number[.last_character]
The field_number syntax is the same as that described for field_start.
The last_character argument, interpreted as a nonnegative decimal
integer, specifies the last character to be used as part of the sort
key. If last_character evaluates to 0 (zero) or is not specified, the
default is the last character of the field specified by field_number.
If -b is in effect, characters within a field are counted from the
first nonspace character in the field. (This applies separately to
first_character and last_character.)
If -k is not specified, the default sort key is the entire line.
When there are multiple key fields, later keys are compared only after
all earlier keys compare as equal. Except when the -u option is
specified, lines that otherwise compare as equal are ordered as though
none of the options -d, -f, -i, -n, or -k were present (but with -r
still in effect, if it was specified) and with all bytes in the lines
significant to the comparison.
The algorithm for the -k option can be summarized as follows:
/*
* -ka.b,c.d = if d==0 then +(a-1).(b-1) -c.d
* else +(a-1).(b-1) -(c-1).d
*/
-m Merges only (assumes sorted input).
-n Sorts any initial numeric strings (including regular expressions
consisting of optional spaces, optional dashes, and zero (0) or more
digits with optional radix character and thousands separator, as
defined by the current locale) by arithmetic value. An empty digit
string is treated as zero; leading zeros and signs on zeros do not
affect ordering. Only one period (.) can be used in numeric strings.
All subsequent periods (.) and any character to the right of the period
(.) will be ignored.
-o output_file
Directs output to output_file instead of standard output. The
output_file can be the same as one of the input files.
-r Reverses the order of the specified sort.
-t character
Sets the field separator character to character. The character argument
is not considered to be part of a field (although it can be included in
a sort key). Each occurrence of character is significant (for example,
two consecutive occurrences of character delimit an empty field). To
specify the tab character as the field separator, you must enclose it
in ' ' (single quotes).
The default field separator is one or more spaces.
-T directory
[Tru64 UNIX] Places all the temporary files that are created in
directory.
-u Suppresses all but one in each set of equal lines (for example, lines
whose sort keys match exactly). Ignored characters such as leading
tabs and spaces, and characters outside of sort keys are not considered
in this type of comparison.
If used with the -c option, -u checks that there are no lines with
duplicate keys, in addition to checking that the input file is sorted.
-y [kilobytes]
[Tru64 UNIX] Starts the sort command using kilobytes of main storage
and adds storage as needed. (If kilobytes is less than the minimum
storage size or greater than the maximum, the minimum or maximum is
used instead.) If the -y option is omitted, the sort command starts
with the default storage size; -y 0 starts with minimum storage, and -y
(with no value) starts with the maximum storage. The amount of storage
used by the sort command has a significant impact on performance.
Sorting a small file in a large amount of storage is wasteful.
-z record_size
Prevents abnormal termination if lines being sorted are longer than the
default buffer size can handle. When the -c or -m options are
specified, the sorting phase is omitted and a system default size
buffer is used. If sorted lines are longer than this size, sort
terminates abnormally. The -z option specifies that the longest line
be recorded in the sort phase so that adequate buffers can be allocated
in the merge phase. The record_size argument must be a value in bytes
equal to or greater than the number of bytes in the longest line to be
merged.
+fskip.cskip
Specifies the start position of a key field. See the -k option for a
description of the current way to perform this operation.
(Obsolescent)
The fskip variable specifies the number of fields to skip from the
beginning of the input line, and the cskip variable specifies the
number of additional characters to skip to the right beyond that point.
For both the starting point (+fskip.cskip) and the ending point
(-fskip.cskip) of a sort key, fskip is measured from the beginning of
the input line, and cskip is measured from the last field skipped. If
you omit .cskip, .0 (zero) is assumed. If you omit fskip, 0 (zero) is
assumed. If you omit the ending field specifier (-fskip.cskip), the
end of the line is the end of the sort key.
You can supply more than one sort key by repeating +fskip.cskip and
-fskip.cskip. In cases where you specify more than one sort key, keys
specified further to the right on the command line are compared only
after all earlier keys are sorted. For example, if the first key is to
be sorted in numerical order and the second according to the collating
sequence, all strings that start with the number 1 are sorted according
to the collating order before the strings that start with the number 2.
Lines that are identical in all keys are sorted with all characters
significant. You can also specify different options for different sort
keys in multiple sort keys.
-fskip.cskip
Specifies the end position of a key field. See the -k option for a
description of the current way to perform this operation.
(Obsolescent)
DESCRIPTION
The sort command sorts lines in its input files and writes the result to
standard output.
The sort command performs one of the following functions:
1. Sorts lines of all the named files together and writes the result to
the specified output.
2. Merges lines of all the named (presorted) files together and writes
the result to the specified output.
3. Checks that a single input file is correctly presorted.
Comparisons are based on one or more sort keys extracted from each line of
input (or the entire line if no sort keys are specified), and are performed
using the collating sequence of the current locale.
The sort command treats all of its input files as one file when it performs
the sort. A - (dash) in place of a file name specifies standard input. If
you do not specify a file name, it sorts standard input.
The sort command can handle a variety of collation rules typically used in
Western European languages, including primary/secondary sorting, one-to-two
character mapping, N-to-one character mapping, and ignore-character
mapping. To summarize briefly:
Primary/Secondary Sorting
In this system, a group of characters all sort to the same primary
location. If there is a tie, a secondary sort is applied. For example, in
French, the plain and accented a's all sort to the same primary location.
If two strings collate to the same primary location, the secondary sort
goes into effect. These words are in correct French order:
abord
pre
aprs
pret
azur
One-to-Two Character Mappings
This system requires that certain single characters be treated as if they
were two characters. For example, in German, the (scharfes-S) is collated
as if it were ss.
N-to-One Character Mappings
Some languages treat a string of characters as if it were one single
collating element. For example, in Spanish, the ch and ll sequences are
treated as their own elements within the alphabet. (ch comes between c and
d in the alphabet, and ll comes between l and m.)
Ignore-Character Mappings
In some cases, certain characters may be ignored in collation. For
example, if - were defined as an ignore-character, the strings re-locate
and relocate would sort to the same place. The results that you get from
sort depend on the collating sequence as defined by the current setting of
the LC_COLLATE environment variable. The configuration files for collation
and character classification information are
/usr/lib/nls/loc/src/locale.src. A field is one or more characters bounded
by the beginning of a line and the current field separator, or one or more
characters bounded by a field separator on either side. The space
character is the default field separator. Lines longer than 1024 bytes are
truncated by sort. The maximum number of fields on a line is 50.
EXIT STATUS
The sort command returns the following exit values:
0 All input files were output successfully, or -c was specified and the
input file was correctly sorted.
1 Under the -c option, the file was not ordered as specified, or if the
-c and -u options were both specified, two input lines were found with
equal keys.
>1 An error occurred.
EXAMPLES
The following examples apply to the C locale, unless it is specifically
stated otherwise.
1. To perform a simple sort, enter:
sort fruits
This displays the contents of fruits sorted in ascending lexicographic
order. This means that the characters in each column are compared one
by one, including spaces, digits, and special characters.
For instance, if fruits contains the text:
banana
orange
Persimmon
apple
%%banana
apple
ORANGE
Then sort fruits displays:
%%banana
ORANGE
Persimmon
apple
apple
banana
orange
This order follows from the fact that in the ASCII collating sequence,
symbols (such as %) precede uppercase letters, and all uppercase
letters precede the lowercase letters. If you are using a different
collating order, your results may be different.
2. To group lines that contain uppercase and special characters with
similar lowercase lines, and remove duplicate lines, enter:
sort -d -f -u fruits
The -u option tells sort to remove duplicate lines, making each line
of the file unique. This displays:
apple
%%banana
orange
Persimmon
Not only was the duplicate apple removed, but banana and ORANGE were
removed as well. The -d option told sort to ignore symbols, so
%%banana and banana were considered to be duplicate lines and banana
was removed. The -f option told sort not to differentiate between
uppercase and lowercase, so ORANGE and orange were considered to be
duplicate lines and ORANGE was removed.
When the -u option is used with input that contains nonidentical lines
that are considered by sort (due to other options) to be duplicates,
there is no way to predict which lines sort will keep and which it
will remove.
3. To sort as in Example 2, but remove duplicates unless capitalized or
punctuated differently, enter:
sort -u -k 1df -k 1 fruits
Options appearing between sort key specifiers apply only to the
specifier preceding them. There are two sorts specified in this
command line. The -k 1df argument specifies the first sort, of the
same type done with -d -f in Example 3. Then -k 1 performs another
comparison to distinguish lines that are not actually identical. This
prevents -u, which applies to both sorts because it precedes the first
sort key specifier, from removing lines that are not exactly identical
to other lines.
Given the fruits file shown in Example 1, the added -k 1 distinguishes
%%banana from banana and ORANGE from orange. However, the two
instances of apple are exactly identical, so one of them is deleted.
apple
%%banana
banana
ORANGE
orange
Persimmon
4. To specify a new field separator, enter:
sort -t : -k 2 vegetables
This sorts vegetables, comparing the text that follows the first colon
on each line. The -t : option tells sort that colons separate fields.
The -k 2 argument tells sort to ignore the first field and to compare
from the start of the second field to the end of the line. If
vegetables contains:
yams:104
turnips:8
potatoes:15
carrots:104
green beans:32
radishes:5
lettuce:15
then sort -t : -k 2 vegetables displays:
carrots:104
yams:104
lettuce:15
potatoes:15
green beans:32
radishes:5
turnips:8
The numbers are not in ascending order. This is because a
lexicographic sort compares each character from left to right. In
other words, 3 comes before 5 so 32 comes before 5.
5. To sort on more than one field, enter:
sort -t : -k 2n -k 1r vegetables
This performs a numeric sort on the second field (-k 2n) and then,
within that ordering, sorts the first field in reverse collating order
(-k 1r). The output looks like this:
radishes:5
turnips:8
potatoes:15
lettuce:15
green beans:32
yams:104
carrots:104
The lines are sorted in numeric order; when two lines have the same
number, they appear in reverse collating order.
6. To replace the original file with the sorted text, enter:
sort -o vegetables vegetables
The -o vegetables option stores the sorted output into the file
vegetables.
7. To collate using Spanish rules, set the LC_COLLATE (or LANG)
environment variable to a Spanish locale, and then use sort in the
regular way, enter:
sort sp.words
If an input file named sp.words contains the following Spanish words:
dama
loro
chapa
canto
mover
chocolate
curioso
llanura
The sorted file looks like this:
canto
curioso
chapa
chocolate
dama
loro
llanura
mover
If you sort the file in the default C locale, the output looks like
this:
canto
chapa
chocolate
curioso
dama
llanura
loro
mover
ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
The following environment variables affect the execution of sort:
LANG
Provides a default value for the internationalization variables that
are unset or null. If LANG is unset or null, the corresponding value
from the default locale is used. If any of the internationalization
variables contain an invalid setting, the utility behaves as if none of
the variables had been defined.
LC_ALL
If set to a non-empty string value, overrides the values of all the
other internationalization variables.
LC_CTYPE
Determines the locale for the interpretation of sequences of bytes of
text data as characters (for example, single-byte as opposed to
multibyte characters in arguments) and the behavior of character
classification for the -b, -d, -f, -i, and -n options.
LC_MESSAGES
Determines the locale for the format and contents of diagnostic
messages written to standard error.
NLSPATH
Determines the location of message catalogues for the processing of
LC_MESSAGES.
FILES
/usr/lib/nls/loc/src/locale.src
Configuration files
SEE ALSO
Commands: comm(1), join(1), uniq(1)
Functions: setlocale(3), tolower(3)
Files: locale(4)
Standards: standards(5)
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