SORT-UNIQ-COUNT(1)

💖 SORT-UNIQ-COUNT(1) 💖

okay bestie, so this is from the NCBI Entrez Direct User's Manual, and honestly? it's giving "tiny script, huge main character energy." two lil programs, one job: tell you how many times each line shows up. periodt.

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✨ NAME ✨

sort-uniq-count, sort-uniq-count-rank — print line frequencies 🎀

like. that's it. that's the whole vibe. they count lines. slay.

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✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

sort-uniq-count[-rank] [[-]b] [[-]f] [[-]i] [[-]n] [[-]r] [[-]s]

okay so notice the little tea ☕: the flags can be written with or without a leading dash. -f and f are the same thing here. no cap. the brackets around the dash in the synopsis are literally saying "dash optional, bestie."

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✨ DESCRIPTION ✨

so here's the deal. sort-uniq-count and sort-uniq-count-rank each read a text file on standard input, sort it according to whatever flags you gave them (-f is the default, iykyk), and then report to standard output how often each input line occurs. 🌸

every single output line is built like this: a count, then a tab, then an input line. so it's count<TAB>line. that's the shape. that's the format. don't fight it. 💅

• sort-uniq-count gives you the output in your choice of sort order. you're the main character, you pick.
• sort-uniq-count-rank is the overachiever 👑: it sorts primarily from highest to lowest count, and then uses your sort order as the tiebreaker. so the most frequent lines float right to the top where they belong.

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✨ OPTIONS ✨

one bullet per flag, no skips, we're thorough here 💖

• [-]b — ignore leading blanks. those lil spaces at the start? not important, bestie. 🙈
• [-]f — ignore capitalization. HELLO and hello? same girl. same. (this one is the default btw ✨)
• [-]i — consider only printable characters. the unprintable ones get the silent treatment 💀
• [-]n — compare according to numerical value. numbers get compared as numbers, not as lil alphabet soup. 🔥
• [-]r — reverse the result of comparisons. flip it. turn it upside down. 🦋
• [-]s — stabilize sort. keep the order stable, queen. ⭐

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✨ SEE ALSO ✨

go give these their flowers too, fr fr:

• sort(1)
• xtract(1)

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and that's the whole page, bestie!! this was brought to you by NCBI, dated 2025-05-26 — so if you're reading this way later, just know it was iconic when it dropped 🫶💜✨