sorts the contents of a file without the need for a second file to take the sorted output. This was previously entered as `sort -g list.txt -o $_` but as others have pointed out the $_ references the previous command. so this would've worked had that been the second part of a command joined with && like: cat list.txt && sort -g list.txt -o $_ The user below me Robin had the most correct command. Show Sample Output

I love this function because it tells me everything I want to know about files, more than stat, more than ls. It's very useful and infinitely expandable. find $PWD -maxdepth 1 -printf '%.5m %10M %#9u:%-9g %#5U:%-5G [%AD | %TD | %CD] [%Y] %p\n' | sort -rgbS 50% 00761 drwxrw---x askapache:askapache 777:666 [06/10/10 | 06/10/10 | 06/10/10] [d] /web/cg/tmp The key is: # -printf '%.5m %10M %#9u:%-9g %#5U:%-5G [%AD | %TD | %CD] [%Y] %p\n' which believe it or not took me hundreds of tweaking before I was happy with the output. You can easily use this within a function to do whatever you want.. This simple function works recursively if you call it with -r as an argument, and sorts by file permissions. lsl(){ O="-maxdepth 1";sed -n '/-r/!Q1'<<<$@ &&O=;find $PWD $O -printf '%.5m %10M %#9u:%-9g %#5U:%-5G [%AD | %TD | %CD] [%Y] %p\n'|sort -rgbS 50%; } Personally I'm using this function because: lll () { local a KS="1 -r -g"; sed -n '/-sort=/!Q1' <<< $@ && KS=`sed 's/.*-sort=\(.*\)/\1/g'<<<$@`; find $PWD -maxdepth 1 -printf '%.5m %10M %#9u:%-9g %#5U:%-5G [%AD | %TD | %CD] [%Y] %p\n'|sort -k$KS -bS 50%; } # i can sort by user lll -sort=3 # or sort by group reversed lll -sort=4 -r # and sort by modification time lll -sort=6 If anyone wants to help me make this function handle multiple dirs/files like ls, go for it and I would appreciate it.. Something very minimal would be awesome.. maybe like: for a; do lll $a; done Note this uses the latest version of GNU find built from source, easy to build from gnu ftp tarball. Taken from my http://www.askapache.com/linux-unix/bash_profile-functions-advanced-shell.html Show Sample Output

This lists all the files in a folder, then finds the commit date for them one by one, then sorts them from newest to oldest

This command list and sort files by size and in reverse order, the reverse order is very helpful when you have a very long list and wish to have the biggest files at the bottom so you don't have scrool up. The file size info is in human readable output, so ex. 1K..234M...3G Tested with Linux (Red Hat Enterprise Edition)

Works in sort (GNU coreutils) 7.4, don't know when it was implemented but sometime the last 6 years.

random(6) - random lines from a file or random numbers

Once you get into advanced/optimized scripts, functions, or cli usage, you will use the sort command alot. The options are difficult to master/memorize however, and when you use sort commands as much as I do (some examples below), it's useful to have the help available with a simple alias. I love this alias as I never seem to remember all the options for sort, and I use sort like crazy (much better than uniq for example). # Sorts by file permissions find . -maxdepth 1 -printf '%.5m %10M %p\n' | sort -k1 -r -g -bS 20% 00761 drwxrw---x ./tmp 00755 drwxr-xr-x . 00701 drwx-----x ./askapache-m 00644 -rw-r--r-- ./.htaccess # Shows uniq history fast history 1000 | sed 's/^[0-9 ]*//' | sort -fubdS 50% exec bash -lxv export TERM=putty-256color Taken from my http://www.askapache.com/linux-unix/bash_profile-functions-advanced-shell.html Show Sample Output

sort is way slow by default. This tells sort to use a buffer equal to half of the available free memory. It also will use multiple process for the sort equal to the number of cpus on your machine (if greater than 1). For me, it is magnitudes faster. If you put this in your bash_profile or startup file, it will be set correctly when bash is started. sort -S1 --parallel=2 <(echo) &>/dev/null && alias sortfast='sort -S$(($(sed '\''/MemF/!d;s/[^0-9]*//g'\'' /proc/meminfo)/2048)) $([ `nproc` -gt 1 ]&&echo -n --parallel=`nproc`)' Alternative echo|sort -S10M --parallel=2 &>/dev/null && alias sortfast="command sort -S$(($(sed '/MemT/!d;s/[^0-9]*//g' /proc/meminfo)/1024-200)) --parallel=$(($(command grep -c ^proc /proc/cpuinfo)*2))" Show Sample Output

Random choose numbers from 1 to 100 with 5 seconds interval without duplicates. Show Sample Output

This command will sort the contents of FILENAME by redirecting the output to individual .txt files in which 3rd column will be used for sorting. If FILENAME contents are as follows: foo foo A foo bar bar B bar lorem ipsum A lorem Then two files called A.txt and B.txt will be created and their contents will be: A.txt foo foo A foo lorem ipsum A lorem and B.txt will be bar bar B bar

This provides a way to sort output based on the length of the line, so that shorter lines appear before longer lines. It's an addon to the sort that I've wanted for years, sometimes it's very useful. Taken from my http://www.askapache.com/linux-unix/bash_profile-functions-advanced-shell.html Show Sample Output

Shows a list of users that currently running processes are executing as. YMMV regarding ps and it's many variants. For example, you might need: ps -axgu | cut -f1 -d' ' | sort -u Show Sample Output

Randomizes a file. The opposite of sort is sort -R!

another possibility

The sort utility is well used, but sometimes you want a little chaos. This will randomize the lines of a text file. BTW, on OS X there is no | sort -R option! There is also no | shuf These are only in the newer GNU core... This is also faster than the alternate of: | awk 'BEGIN { srand() } { print rand() "\t" $0 }' | sort -n | cut -f2- Show Sample Output

print the lines of a file in randomized order Show Sample Output

Sort using kth column using : delimiter

I used to do this sorting with: sort file.txt | uniq -c | sort -nr But this would cause the line (2nd column) to be sorted in descending (reverse) order as well sa the 1st column. So this will ensure the 2nd column is in ascending alphabetical order. Show Sample Output

Use it as bash-script. The first positional parameter specifies the fixed length of the numerical index. Further params specify the files to manipulate.

This one is for OS X users: sort -R and shuf aren't available in Lion (10.7.5)

Sort your files in folders/chronological order Linux 4.1.6-1-ARCH Show Sample Output

using awk missed the last char thanks @Josay Show Sample Output

Deletes capistrano-style release directories (except that there are dashes between the YYYY-MM-DD) Show Sample Output

We normally get tasks in which one has to sort a data file according to some column. For a single file say foo, we would use sort -k 3 foo >tmp && tmp foo The for loop is useful when we have to do it on a number of files.