Master Linux Sorting: 14 Real-World Examples to Master the sort Command

What is sort

Sort is a Linux program that orders the contents of one or more text files. It uses spaces as field delimiters and outputs the sorted result without modifying the original files unless redirected.

Goal

The article demonstrates 14 practical examples to deepen understanding of the sort command.

Examples

Create target file – create tecmint.txt in /home/$USER/Desktop/tecmint.

View file – display its contents.

Basic sorting – sort the file and output to screen.

Sort and output to file – sort into sorted.txt and view with cat.

Reverse order – use -r to sort descending and save to reversesorted.txt.

Create new file from ls – generate lsl.txt containing the output of ls -l.

Sort by column (numeric) – sort lsl.txt by the second column using -n.

Sort by column (name) – sort lsl.txt by the ninth column (file name).

Redirect output – pipe other command output into sort.

Sort and remove duplicates – sort tecmint.txt with -u to eliminate repeated lines.

Output content – create lsla.txt with ls -lA output.

Sort two files together – sort the contents of lsla.txt and lsl.txt.

Merge and deduplicate – sort and merge the two files, removing duplicate lines.

Multi‑column sorting – sort by columns 2,5 (numeric) and 9 (non‑numeric) of the ls -l output.

Sorting priority follows: numeric‑starting lines first, then lowercase letters, and finally dictionary order. The -n option treats fields as numbers.