Sort

Sort will order a file or standard input. You can choose which field to sort and can sort either alphabetically or numerically. 

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SORT OPTIONS

+i

Skip i fields, sort on the i+1 field.

-i

Stop sorting after the i field.

-t'c'

Use c as the character which separates fields.

-b

Ignore blanks.

-n

Sort by numerical value.

-r

Reverse the order of the sort.

-u

Remove any duplicate lines.

-f

Merge upper and lowercase.

-d

Dictionary order.

You can sort by number or name. To find the largest files, sort the output of ls -s:

% sort +3 -t':' -n /etc/passwd   	Numerical sort on 4th field.   
% sort /etc/passwd   	Alphabetical sort.   
% ls -s | sort -n   	Numerical sort for large files.