Main index | Section 1 | 日本語 | Deutsch | Options |
The command line options are as follows:
| |
Check that the single input file is sorted.
If the file is not sorted,
sort
produces the appropriate error messages and exits with code 1,
otherwise returns 0.
If
| |
| |
Merge only. The input files are assumed to be pre-sorted. If they are not sorted the output order is undefined. | |
| |
Print the output to the output file instead of the standard output. | |
| |
Use size for the maximum size of the memory buffer. Size modifiers %,b,K,M,G,T,P,E,Z,Y can be used. If a memory limit is not explicitly specified, sort takes up to about 90% of available memory. If the file size is too big to fit into the memory buffer, the temporary disk files are used to perform the sorting. | |
| |
Store temporary files in the directory dir. The default path is the value of the environment variable TMPDIR or /var/tmp if TMPDIR is not defined. | |
| |
Unique keys.
Suppress all lines that have a key that is equal to an already
processed one.
This option, similarly to
| |
| |
Stable sort. This option maintains the original record order of records that have an equal key. This is a non-standard feature, but it is widely accepted and used. | |
| |
Print the version and silently exits. | |
| |
Print the help text and silently exits. | |
The following options override the default ordering rules.
When ordering options appear independently of key field
specifications, they apply globally to all sort keys.
When attached to a specific key (see
| |
Ignore leading blank characters when comparing lines. | |
| |
Consider only blank spaces and alphanumeric characters in comparisons. | |
| |
Convert all lowercase characters to their uppercase equivalent before comparison, that is, perform case-independent sorting. | |
| |
Sort by general numerical value.
As opposed to
| |
| |
Sort by numerical value, but take into account the SI suffix,
if present.
Sort first by numeric sign (negative, zero, or
positive); then by SI suffix (either empty, or `k' or `K', or one
of `MGTPEZY', in that order); and finally by numeric value.
The SI suffix must immediately follow the number.
For example, '12345K' sorts before '1M', because M is "larger" than K.
This sort option is useful for sorting the output of a single invocation
of 'df' command with
| |
| |
Ignore all non-printable characters. | |
| |
Sort by month abbreviations. Unknown strings are considered smaller than the month names. | |
| |
Sort fields numerically by arithmetic value. Fields are supposed to have optional blanks in the beginning, an optional minus sign, zero or more digits (including decimal point and possible thousand separators). | |
| |
Sort by a random order.
This is a random permutation of the inputs except that
the equal keys sort together.
It is implemented by hashing the input keys and sorting
the hash values.
The hash function is chosen randomly.
The hash function is randomized by
/dev/random
content, or by file content if it is specified by
| |
| |
Sort in reverse order. | |
| |
Sort version numbers. The input lines are treated as file names in form PREFIX VERSION SUFFIX, where SUFFIX matches the regular expression "(.([A-Za-z~][A-Za-z0-9~]*)?)*". The files are compared by their prefixes and versions (leading zeros are ignored in version numbers, see example below). If an input string does not match the pattern, then it is compared using the byte compare function. All string comparisons are performed in C locale, the locale environment setting is ignored. | |
Example:
$ ls sort* | sort -V sort-1.022.tgz sort-1.23.tgz sort-1.23.1.tgz sort-1.024.tgz sort-1.024.003. sort-1.024.003.tgz sort-1.024.07.tgz sort-1.024.009.tgz | |
The treatment of field separators can be altered using these options:
| |
Ignore leading blank space when determining the start
and end of a restricted sort key (see
| |
| |
Use
char
as a field separator character.
The initial
char
is not considered to be part of a field when determining key offsets.
Each occurrence of
char
is significant (for example,
"charchar"
delimits an empty field).
If
| |
| |
Use NUL as record separator. By default, records in the files are supposed to be separated by the newline characters. With this option, NUL (\0) is used as a record separator character. | |
Other options:
| |
Specify maximum number of files that can be opened by sort at once. This option affects behavior when having many input files or using temporary files. The default value is 16. | |
| |
Use PROGRAM to compress temporary files.
PROGRAM must compress standard input to standard output, when called
without arguments.
When called with argument
| |
| |
In random sort, the file content is used as the source of the 'seed' data for the hash function choice. Two invocations of random sort with the same seed data will use the same hash function and will produce the same result if the input is also identical. By default, file /dev/random is used. | |
| |
Print some extra information about the sorting process to the standard output. | |
| |
Take the input file list from the file filename. The file names must be separated by NUL (like the output produced by the command "find ... -print0"). | |
| |
Try to use radix sort, if the sort specifications allow. The radix sort can only be used for trivial locales (C and POSIX), and it cannot be used for numeric or month sort. Radix sort is very fast and stable. | |
| |
Use mergesort. This is a universal algorithm that can always be used, but it is not always the fastest. | |
| |
Try to use quick sort, if the sort specifications allow.
This sort algorithm cannot be used with
| |
| |
Try to use heap sort, if the sort specifications allow.
This sort algorithm cannot be used with
| |
| |
Try to use file memory mapping system call. It may increase speed in some cases. | |
The following operands are available:
file |
The pathname of a file to be sorted, merged, or checked.
If no
file
operands are specified, or if a
file
operand is
|
A field is defined as a maximal sequence of characters other than the
field separator and record separator (newline by default).
Initial blank spaces are included in the field unless
Fields are specified by the
The arguments
field1
and
field2
have the form
m.n
(m,n > 0)
and can be followed by one or more of the modifiers
b, d, f, i,
n, g, M
and
r,
which correspond to the options discussed above.
When
b
is specified it applies only to
field1
or
field2
where it is specified while the rest of the modifiers
apply to the whole key field regardless if they are
specified only with
field1
or
field2
or both.
A
field1
position specified by
m.n
is interpreted as the
nth
character from the beginning of the
mth
field.
A missing
amp;.n
in
field1
means
‘amp;.1’,
indicating the first character of the
mth
field; if the
nth positions are always counted from the field beginning, even if the field is shorter than the number of specified positions. Thus, the key can really start from a position in a subsequent field.
A
field2
position specified by
m.n
is interpreted as the
nth
character (including separators) from the beginning of the
mth
field.
A missing
amp;.n
indicates the last character of the
mth
field;
m
= amp;0
designates the end of a line.
Thus the option
LC_COLLATE | |
Locale settings to be used to determine the collation for sorting records. | |
LC_CTYPE | |
Locale settings to be used to case conversion and classification of characters, that is, which characters are considered whitespaces, etc. | |
LC_MESSAGES | |
Locale settings that determine the language of output messages that sort prints out. | |
LC_NUMERIC | |
Locale settings that determine the number format used in numeric sort. | |
LC_TIME | |
Locale settings that determine the month format used in month sort. | |
LC_ALL | |
Locale settings that override all of the above locale settings. This environment variable can be used to set all these settings to the same value at once. | |
LANG | Used as a last resort to determine different kinds of locale-specific behavior if neither the respective environment variable, nor LC_ALL are set. |
NLSPATH | |
Path to NLS catalogs. | |
TMPDIR | |
Path to the directory in which temporary files will be stored.
Note that
TMPDIR
may be overridden by the
| |
GNUSORT_NUMERIC_COMPATIBILITY | |
If defined
| |
/var/tmp/.bsdsort.PID.* | |
Temporary files. | |
/dev/random | |
Default seed file for the random sort. | |
0 |
Successfully sorted the input files or if used with
|
1 |
On disorder (or non-uniqueness) with the
|
2 | An error occurred. |
The flags
[
All long options are extensions to the specification, some of them are provided for compatibility with GNU versions and some of them are own extensions.
The old key notations +pos1 and pos2 come from older versions of sort and are still supported but their use is highly discouraged.
Oleg Moskalenko <Mt mom040267@gmail.com>
The performance depends highly on locale settings,
efficient choice of sort keys and key complexity.
The fastest sort is with locale C, on whole lines,
with option
When sorting by arithmetic value, using
SORT (1) | March 19, 2015 |
Main index | Section 1 | 日本語 | Deutsch | Options |
Please direct any comments about this manual page service to Ben Bullock. Privacy policy.