How to Sort Files Numerically from Linux Command Line

How to sort files numerically from linux command line

This would be my first thought:

ls -1 | sed 's/\-\([kM]\)\?\([0-9]\{2\}\)\./-\10\2./' | sort | sed 's/0\([0-9]\{2\}\)/\1/'

Basically I just use sed to pad the number with zeros and then use it again afterwards to strip off the leading zero.

I don't know if it might be quicker in Perl.

Sort files numerically in bash

I would try following code. Works on my testing scenario:

ls -1 *\.flv | sort -n -k1.2

The ls lists flv files 1 on each line, sort takes first (and only one) word on each line starting on second character (start of the number). Sorts numerically

Linux sort numerically based on first column

tail -n +2 file.csv | sort -k1,2 -n -t"," should do the trick.

How to sort a file, based on its numerical values for a field?

Take a peek at the man page for sort...

   -n, --numeric-sort
          compare according to string numerical value

So here is an example...

sort -n filename

how to use Linux command Sort to sort the text file according to 4th column, numeric order?

sort -nk4 file

-n for numerical sort
-k for providing key

or add -r option for reverse sorting

sort -nrk4 file

Sort files numerically by name, then by parent directory in BASH

Use / as the separator, first sort by the filename, then by the directory name:

find . -type f | sort -t/ -k3,3n -k2,2n

Process files in numerical order

You can use the ls option -v for this. From man ls:

-v natural sort of (version) numbers within text

If you change your inner loop to

for f in `ls -v` ; do      # iterate over files in sub-directory
    term="$term $f"
done

The results from ls will be sorted ascending numerical order.

Another option is sort, from man sort:

-g, --general-numeric-sort
compare according to general numerical value

Piping the results from ls through sort -g gives the same result.

Edit

Since using the output of ls to get filenames is a bad idea, consider also using find instead, e.g.

for f in `find * -type f | sort -g`; do
    ...

sorting files in a directory based on numerical index within file-names

You can try using sort with the -V option used for natural sorting of numbers within text:

for var in `ls ipsec_packet*.txt | sort -V`; do  echo $var; done

Numerical sort in shell when each line does not begin with number

$ sort -nk2 foo.txt
foo 1
foo 12
foo 15
foo 110
foo 120

From the sort man page:

-k, --key=POS1[,POS2]

start a key at POS1, end it at POS2 (origin 1)

As for an answer to the first part of your question: I don't know for sure (i.e., I don't find it explicitly mentioned), but sort works by fields, with the default separator set to whitespace. So by default, it sorts on the first field only, and ignores the other fields. If you would try and combine both fields, e.g. by using -t and setting it to some non-used character (-t$), -n sorts on numerical string value, which would be alphabetical (since foo simply isn't a number). Thus, foo 110 would still come before foo 12.

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