Organizing Lists with the sort Command

GETTING SORTED

Article from Issue 52/2005
Author(s):

sort helps you organize file lists and program

output. And if you like, you can even use this small

but powerful tool to merge and sort multiple files.

The sort command allows you to

sort a file line by line. The command

can either process a specified

file or read from standard input. You

decide the sort criteria – sort has parameters

that give you granular control.

Simple Sorting Exercises

/etc/passwd is an excellent place to start

experimenting with sort. If you look

inside the file, you will see that the lines

comprise a number of fields, for example:

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