sort

Updated

July 31, 2026

Overview

sort orders lines of text. Combine with uniq, cut, and awk for classic data munging pipelines.

Syntax

sort [options] [file...]

Common Options

Option	Description
`-n`	Numeric
`-h`	Human sizes (`2K`, `3G`)
`-r`	Reverse
`-u`	Unique (like sort\|uniq)
`-k F1[,F2]`	Key fields (1-based)
`-t CHAR`	Field separator
`-f`	Fold case
`-V`	Version sort
`-M`	Month names
`-s`	Stable
`-o file`	Output file (can be input)
`-c` / `-C`	Check sorted
`-m`	Merge already-sorted inputs
`-z`	NUL-terminated lines
`--parallel=N`	Parallel sort (GNU)

Examples with Explanations

sort names.txt
sort -n numbers.txt
sort -nr numbers.txt
sort -k2,2 file.txt
sort -t: -k3,3n /etc/passwd
sort -h sizes.txt
sort -u file.txt
sort -o file.txt file.txt
du -h | sort -h | tail
ps aux | sort -nrk 3 | head    # by %CPU column

Locale

Sort order depends on LC_COLLATE / LANG. Use LC_ALL=C sort for byte order.