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sort lines by length

Terminal - sort lines by length
perl -C -e 'print for sort { length $a <=> length $b or $a cmp $b } <>' < /usr/share/dict/words | tail
2011-10-20 01:43:25
User: dbr
Functions: cmp perl sort
3
Up
Down
sort lines by length

making it "sound" more "natural" language like -- additionally sorting the longest words alphabetically:

this approach is using:

* to get at all lines of input

* post-"for" structure

* short-circuit-or in sort: if the lengths are the same, then sort alphabetically otherwise don't even evaluate the right hand side of the or

* -C sets all input and ouput channels to utf8

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Alternatives

There is 1 alternative - vote for the best!

Terminal - Alternatives
awk 'length>72' file
2009-09-10 05:54:41
User: haivu
Functions: awk
Tags: awk
15
Up
Down
Identify long lines in a file

This command displays a list of lines that are longer than 72 characters. I use this command to identify those lines in my scripts and cut them short the way I like it.

Comments (3) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious
perl -lne '$l{$_}=length;END{for(sort{$l{$a}<=>$l{$b}}keys %l){print}}' < /usr/share/dict/words | tail
2009-09-10 14:49:03
User: syssyphus
Functions: perl
6
Up
Down
sort lines by length
Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious
awk '{print length, $0;}' | sort -nr
2009-10-07 16:32:27
User: ashawley
Functions: awk sort
Tags: awk, sort
3
Up
Down
sort lines by length
Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious

Know a better way?

If you can do better, submit your command here.

What others think

perl -ne 'printf("%d\t%s", length, $_)'< /usr/share/dict/words | sort -n | tail | cut -f2

Comment by kev 82 weeks and 5 days ago

this is not better just showing that schwartzian transform can be applied in perl one-liner..

perl -C -e 'print map { $_->[0] } sort { $a->[1] <=> $b->[1] } map { [$_,length $_] } <>' < /usr/share/dict/words | tail
Comment by alperyilmaz 82 weeks and 1 day ago

the first approach was to show a more 'idiomatic' version to syssyphus' approach.

the cool thing with schwartzian transforms is, you can plug more parts in, e.g. this equivalent (not efficient!):

perl -C -e 'print map { $_->[0] } reverse grep { $got++ < 1_0 } reverse sort { $a->[1] <=> $b->[1] } map { [$_,length $_] } <>' < /usr/share/dict/words
Comment by dbr 82 weeks ago

Your point of view

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