sort alphanumerics using unix sort

Question

I have alphanumeric file containing following content

z1.doc
z10.doc
z100.doc
z101.doc
z102.doc
z11.doc
z12.doc
z13.doc
z14.doc
z15.doc
z16.doc
z17.doc
z18.doc
z19.doc
z2.doc
z20.doc
z3.doc
z4.doc
z5.doc
z6.doc
z7.doc
z8.doc
z9.doc

I want to sort it using unix/linux sort command to get the following output

z1.doc
z2.doc
z3.doc
z4.doc
z5.doc
z6.doc
z7.doc
z8.doc
z9.doc
z10.doc
z11.doc
z12.doc
z13.doc
z14.doc
z15.doc
z16.doc
z17.doc
z18.doc
z19.doc
z20.doc
z100.doc
z101.doc
z102.doc

I have used following commandline

sort -t "." -n -k1 sortAlphanumeric.txt

But output is not as required. Is it possible using sort command to sort this to get the required output or i should choose some other scripting language.

You should check [the following thread][1] with similar question [1]: unix.stackexchange.com/a/33913/12641 — lik
– lik, Commented Apr 26, 2014 at 13:55
possible duplicate of How can I sort alphanumeric strings in Unix? — devnull
– devnull, Commented Apr 26, 2014 at 13:57

choroba · Accepted Answer · 2014-04-26 13:56:19Z

1

Tell sort that your key starts on position 2 and you want to sort numerically:

sort -k1.2n

answered Apr 26, 2014 at 13:56

choroba

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Comments

songyuanyao · Accepted Answer · 2014-05-29 02:47:50Z

1

You can always perform sort with argument -V to sort alphanumeric string..

$ sort -V inputfile > outputfile

$ cat inputfile  
z1.doc  
z10.doc  
z100.doc  
z101.doc  
z102.doc  
z11.doc  
z12.doc  
z13.doc  
z14.doc  
z15.doc  
z16.doc  
z17.doc  
z18.doc  
z19.doc  
z2.doc  
z20.doc  
z3.doc  
z4.doc  
z5.doc  
z6.doc  
z7.doc  
z8.doc  
z9.doc    

$ cat outputfile
z1.doc  
z2.doc  
z3.doc  
z4.doc  
z5.doc  
z6.doc  
z7.doc  
z8.doc  
z9.doc  
z10.doc  
z11.doc  
z12.doc  
z13.doc  
z14.doc  
z15.doc  
z16.doc  
z17.doc  
z18.doc  
z19.doc  
z20.doc  
z100.doc  
z101.doc  
z102.doc

edited May 29, 2014 at 2:47

songyuanyao

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answered May 29, 2014 at 2:29

user3682472

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Comments

baldrunner2049 · Accepted Answer · 2014-04-26 13:42:05Z

0

cheat a little bit. say that the field delimiter is 'z' and sort numerically using second field.

sort -t z -k 2 -n < fff
z1.doc
z2.doc
z3.doc
z4.doc
z5.doc
z6.doc
z7.doc
z8.doc
z9.doc
z10.doc
z11.doc
z12.doc
z13.doc
z14.doc
z15.doc
z16.doc
z17.doc
z18.doc
z19.doc
z20.doc
z100.doc
z101.doc
z102.doc

answered Apr 26, 2014 at 13:42

baldrunner2049

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Comments

Miller · Accepted Answer · 2014-09-18 00:19:59Z

0

If you don't want to figure out where the number/letter boundaries are in advance for your data, you can use the module Sort::Key::Natural and natsort

perl -MSort::Key::Natural -e "print natsort <>" sortAlphanumeric.txt

edited Sep 18, 2014 at 0:19

answered Apr 26, 2014 at 18:38

Miller

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1 Comment

Miller Over a year ago

Converted solution to Sort::Key::Natural from Sort::Naturally because of the latter ignores non-word characters.

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