sort

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sort

sort

sort orders lines of text, alphabetically by default, or numerically with -n, and in reverse with -r. -k sorts by a specific field instead of the whole line. It's frequently the first step in a pipeline before deduplicating or summarizing data.

Note: Always add -n when sorting numbers as text sorts them lexically, putting "10" before "2".

Example: sort

bash

#!/bin/bash
printf "10\n2\n33\n4\n" | sort
echo "---"
printf "10\n2\n33\n4\n" | sort -n

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Chapter Quiz — Complete all 12 topics to unlock

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Running Commands in the Background (&) and $!
grep
The wait Command
Process IDs and the ps Command
cut
Signals and trap
sort
Subshells vs the Current Shell ( ( ) vs { } )
uniq
Command Substitution vs Process Substitution
wc
Killing Processes

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Chapter Quiz — Complete all 12 topics to unlock

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