Info Catalog coreutils: Version sort ordering coreutils: Implementation Details

coreutils: Version sort overview

 
 30.1 Version sort overview
 ==========================
 
 “version sort” ordering (and similarly, “natural sort” ordering) is a
 method to sort items such as file names and lines of text in an order
 that feels more natural to people, when the text contains a mixture of
 letters and digits.
 
    Standard sorting usually does not produce the order that one expects
 because comparisons are made on a character-by-character basis.
 
    Compare the sorting of the following items:
 
      Alphabetical sort:           Version Sort:
 
      a1                           a1
      a120                         a2
      a13                          a13
      a2                           a120
 
    version sort functionality in GNU coreutils is available in the ‘ls
 -v’, ‘ls --sort=version’, ‘sort -V’, ‘sort --version-sort’ commands.
 

Menu

 
· Using version sort in GNU coreutils
· Origin of version sort and differences from natural sort
· Correct/Incorrect ordering and Expected/Unexpected results
 

Info Catalog coreutils: Version sort ordering coreutils: Implementation Details