SORT(1)

SORT(1) 💅

okay so this is the General Commands Manual page for SORT(1), and I’m gonna make it make sense, bestie. 🫶

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✨ NAME ✨

sort — displays the sorted concatenation of all FILE(s). With no FILE, or when FILE is -, it reads standard input. slay. 💖

🦋 SYNOPSIS 🦋

sort [OPTION]... [FILE]...

🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

Same energy as NAME, but with room to breathe: sort displays the sorted concatenation of all FILE(s). With no FILE, or when FILE is -, it reads standard input. no cap. ✨

💅 OPTIONS 💅

• --help — print help information. iconic. 🎀
• --version — print version information. 🌸
• --sort — okay so this one picks the sort vibe. Possible values:
  • general-numeric
  • human-numeric
  • month
  • numeric
  • version
  • random
• -h, --human-numeric-sort — compares according to human-readable sizes, like 1M > 100k, bestie. 💅
• -M, --month-sort — compares according to month name abbreviation. 🗓️
• -n, --numeric-sort — compares according to string numerical value. 🔢
• -g, --general-numeric-sort — compares according to string general numerical value. 🧮
• -V, --version-sort — sorts by SemVer version number, like 1.12.2 > 1.1.2. 🦋
• -R, --random-sort — shuffles in random order. chaotic, love that. 💀
• --random-source <FILE> — uses FILE as a source of random data. 🎲
• -d, --dictionary-order — considers only blanks and alphanumeric characters. 🍓
• -m, --merge — merges already sorted files; does not sort. 💖
• -c, --check — checks for sorted input; does not sort. Possible values:
  • silent
  • quiet
  • diagnose-first
• -C, --check-silent — exits successfully if the given file is already sorted, and exits with status 1 otherwise. vibe check, but make it exit-code. ✨
• -f, --ignore-case — folds lower case to upper case characters. 🎀
• -i, --ignore-nonprinting — ignores nonprinting characters. 🙈
• -b, --ignore-leading-blanks — ignores leading blanks when finding sort keys in each line. 🌸
• -o, --output <FILENAME> — writes output to FILENAME instead of stdout. 🫶
• -r, --reverse — reverses the output. 💅
• -s, --stable — stabilizes sort by disabling last-resort comparison. bestie behavior. 💖
• -u, --unique — outputs only the first of an equal run. one of each, periodt. 👑
• -k, --key — sorts by a key. 🔑
• -t, --field-separator — custom separator for -k. ✂️
• -z, --zero-terminated — line delimiter is NUL, not newline. 🌈
• --parallel <NUM_THREADS> — changes the number of threads running concurrently to NUM_THREADS. ⚡
• -S, --buffer-size <SIZE> — sets the maximum SIZE of each segment in number of sorted items. 🎀
• -T, --temporary-directory <DIR> — uses DIR for temporaries, not $TMPDIR or /tmp. 📁
• --compress-program <PROG> — compresses temporary files with PROG, decompresses with PROG -d; PROG has to take input from stdin and output to stdout. 🧚
• --batch-size <N_MERGE> — merges at most N_MERGE inputs at once. 💜
• --files0-from <NUL_FILE> — reads input from the files specified by NUL-terminated NUL_FILE. 🦋
• --debug — underlines the parts of the line that are actually used for sorting. main character energy. ⭐
• [files] — the FILE arguments go here, bestie. 💖

🎀 EXTRA 🎀

okay so the key format is literally:

FIELD[.CHAR][OPTIONS][,FIELD[.CHAR]][OPTIONS]

Fields by default are separated by the first whitespace after a non-whitespace character. Use -t to specify a custom separator. In the default case, whitespace is appended at the beginning of each field. Custom separators however are not included in fields. 💅

FIELD and CHAR both start at 1 (i.e. they are 1-indexed). If there is no end specified after a comma, the end will be the end of the line. If CHAR is set 0, it means the end of the field. CHAR defaults to 1 for the start position and to 0 for the end position. 🌸

Valid options are: MbdfhnRrV. They override the global options for this key. no cap. ✨

🌈 VERSION 🌈

This build is v(uutils coreutils) 0.12.0, bestie. 💖

xoxo, your SORT(1) bestie — v(uutils coreutils) 0.12.0, dated 2026-09-17, bye 🫶💋