sort

The sort command line tool is used to sort the lines of a file or standard input by a specific criteria. It is commonly used to arrange data in ascending or descending order based on alphabetical or numerical values.

By default, the sort command sorts the lines of a file in ascending order based on the ASCII values of the characters. It can also sort files in reverse order using the -r option.

The sort command can handle large files efficiently with the help of external sorting techniques, which involve storing temporary data on disk.

It supports various options, such as -n for sorting numerically, -u for eliminating duplicate lines, and -k for sorting based on specific columns or fields.

Additionally, the sort command can ignore leading spaces or blank characters using the -b option, and it can perform case-insensitive sorting with the -f option.

The sort command can be used in conjunction with other commands through pipes to manipulate and process data. For example, it can be combined with the uniq command to sort and remove duplicate lines.

The sort command is available on most Unix-like operating systems, including Linux and macOS. It is also supported in Windows PowerShell and Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL).

The output of the sort command can be redirected to a new file using the > symbol or appended to an existing file using the >> symbol.

The sort command allows customization through environment variables, such as LC_ALL for specifying the language and locale settings for sorting, and LC_COLLATE for specifying the collation order.

Overall, the sort command is a versatile and powerful tool for sorting and organizing data in the command line environment.