Man Pages - Manpage for sort

Posted May 26th, 2004 in Man Pages (Updated June 15th, 2004)

man page for the unix linux bsd command sort

NAME
SYNOPSIS
DESCRIPTION
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SEE ALSO

NAME

sort - sort lines of text files

SYNOPSIS

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

DESCRIPTION

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

Ordering options:

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

-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 POS 2 (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- to whitespace 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 otherwise: 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.