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

Question

Example file txt     100 foo   2 bar   300 tuu   When using sort -k 1 1 file txt  the order of lines will not change  though we are expecting      2 bar   100 foo   300 tuu   How to sort a field consisting of numbers based on the absolute numerical value

User · Answer

You must do the following command   sort -n -k1 filename  That should do it

User · Answer

Use sort -n or sort --numeric-sort

User · Answer

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

User · Answer

Use sort -nr for sorting in descending order  Refer  Sort  Refer the above Man page for further reference

User · Answer

echo   Enter any values to sorting    read n i 0  t 0  echo   Enter the n value    for   i 0 i lt n i      do read s  i  done for   i 0 i lt n i      do for   j i 1 j lt n j      do if     s  i   -gt   s  j     then t   s  i   s  i    s  j   s  j   t fi done done for   i 0 i lt n i      do echo     s  i      done

User · Answer

If you are sorting strings that are mixed text  amp  numbers  for example filenames of rolling logs then sorting with sort -n doesn t work as expected     ls  sort -n output log 1 output log 10 output log 11 output log 12 output log 13 output log 14 output log 15 output log 16 output log 17 output log 18 output log 19 output log 2 output log 20 output log 3 output log 4 output log 5 output log 6 output log 7 output log 8 output log 9   In that case option -V does the trick     ls  sort -V output log 1 output log 2 output log 3 output log 4 output log 5 output log 6 output log 7 output log 8 output log 9 output log 10 output log 11 output log 12 output log 13 output log 14 output log 15 output log 16 output log 17 output log 18 output log 19 output log 20   from man page       -V  --version-sort           natural sort of  version  numbers within text

User · Answer

Well  most other answers here refer to  sort -n   However  I m not sure this works for negative numbers  Here are the results I get with sort version 6 10 on Fedora 9   Input file   -0 907928466796875 -0 61614990234375 1 135406494140625 0 48614501953125 -0 4140167236328125   Output   -0 4140167236328125 0 48614501953125 -0 61614990234375 -0 907928466796875 1 135406494140625   Which is obviously not ordered by numeric value   Then  I guess that a more precise answer would be to use sort -n but only if all the values are positive   P S   Using sort -g returns just the same results for this example  Edit   Looks like the locale settings affect how the minus sign affects the order  see here   In order to get proper results I just did   LC ALL C sort -n filename txt

User · Answer

You have to use the numeric sort option   sort -n -k 1 1 File txt

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

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