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.TH SORT 1 

.SH NAME

sort \- sort and/or merge files

.SH SYNOPSIS

.B sort

[

.BI -cmuMbdf\&inrwt x

]

[

.BI + pos1

[

.BI - pos2

] ...

] ...

[

.B -k

.I pos1

[

.I ,pos2

]

] ...

.br

\h'0.5in

[

.B -o

.I output

]

[

.B -T

.I dir

\&...

]

[

.I option

\&...

]

[

.I file

\&...

]

.SH DESCRIPTION

.I Sort\^

sorts

lines of all the

.I files

together and writes the result on

the standard output.

If no input files are named, the standard input is sorted.

.PP

The default sort key is an entire line.

Default ordering is

lexicographic by runes.

The ordering is affected globally by the following options,

one or more of which may appear.

.TP

.B -M

Compare as months.

The first three

non-white space characters

of the field

are folded

to upper case

and compared

so that

.L JAN

precedes

.LR FEB ,

etc.

Invalid fields

compare low to

.LR JAN .

.TP

.B -b

Ignore leading white space (spaces and tabs) in field comparisons.

.TP

.B -d

`Phone directory' order:

only letters,

accented letters,

digits and white space

are significant in comparisons.

.TP

.B -f

Fold lower case

letters onto upper case.

Accented characters are folded to their

non-accented upper case form.

.TP

.B -i

Ignore characters outside the

.SM ASCII

range 040-0176

in non-numeric comparisons.

.TP

.B -w

Like

.BR -i ,

but ignore only tabs and spaces.

.TP

.B -n

An initial numeric string,

consisting of optional white space,

optional plus or minus sign,

and zero or more digits with optional decimal point,

is sorted by arithmetic value.

.TP

.B -g

Numbers, like

.B -n 

but with optional 

.BR e -style

exponents, are sorted by value.

.TP

.B -r

Reverse the sense of comparisons.

.TP

.BI -t x\^

`Tab character' separating fields is

.IR x .

.PP

The notation

.BI + "pos1\| " - pos2\^

restricts a sort key to a field beginning at

.I pos1\^

and ending just before

.IR pos2 .

.I Pos1\^

and

.I pos2\^

each have the form

.IB m . n\f1,

optionally followed by one or more of the flags

.BR Mbdfginr ,

where

.I m\^

tells a number of fields to skip from the beginning of the line and

.I n\^

tells a number of characters to skip further.

If any flags are present they override all the global

ordering options for this key.

A missing

.BI \&. n\^

means

.BR \&.0 ;

a missing

.BI - pos2\^

means the end of the line.

Under the

.BI -t x\^

option, fields are strings separated by

.IR x ;

otherwise fields are

non-empty strings separated by white space.

White space before a field

is part of the field, except under option

.BR -b .

A

.B b

flag may be attached independently to

.IR pos1

and

.IR pos2.

.PP

The notation

.B -k

.IR pos1 [, pos2 ]

is how POSIX

.I sort

defines fields:

.I pos1

and

.I pos2

have the same format but different meanings.

The value of

.I  m\^

is origin 1 instead of origin 0

and a missing

.BI \&. n\^

in

.I pos2

is the end of the field.

.PP

When there are multiple sort keys, later keys

are compared only after all earlier keys

compare equal.

Lines that otherwise compare equal are ordered

with all bytes significant.

.PP

These option arguments are also understood:

.TP \w'\fL-z\fIrecsize\fLXX'u

.B -c

Check that the single input file is sorted according to the ordering rules;

give no output unless the file is out of sort.

.TP

.B -m

Merge; assume the input files are already sorted.

.TP

.B -u

Suppress all but one in each

set of equal lines.

Ignored bytes

and bytes outside keys

do not participate in

this comparison.

.TP

.B -o

The next argument is the name of an output file

to use instead of the standard output.

This file may be the same as one of the inputs.

.TP

.BI -T dir

Put temporary files in

.I dir

rather than in

.BR /tmp .

.ne 4

.SH EXAMPLES

.TP

.L sort -u +0f +0 list

Print in alphabetical order all the unique spellings

in a list of words

where capitalized words differ from uncapitalized.

.TP

.L sort -t: +1 /adm/users

Print the users file

sorted by user name

(the second colon-separated field).

.TP

.L sort -umM dates

Print the first instance of each month in an already sorted file.

Options

.B -um

with just one input file make the choice of a

unique representative from a set of equal lines predictable.

.TP

.L

grep -n '^' input | sort -t: +1f +0n | sed 's/[0-9]*://'

A stable sort: input lines that compare equal will 

come out in their original order.

.SH FILES

.BI /tmp/sort. <pid>.<ordinal>

.SH SOURCE

.B /sys/src/cmd/sort.c

.SH SEE ALSO

.IR uniq (1),

.IR look (1)

.SH DIAGNOSTICS

.I Sort

comments and exits with non-null status for various trouble

conditions and for disorder discovered under option

.BR -c .

.SH BUGS

An external null character can be confused

with an internally generated end-of-field character.

The result can make a sub-field not sort

less than a longer field.

.PP

Some of the options, e.g.

.BR -M ,

are hopelessly provincial.