VNL-SORT(1)

👑 VNL-SORT(1) 👑

okay bestie, welcome to the vnlog manual, and specifically to vnl-sort — the little icon that sorts an vnlog file and keeps the legend while doing it. no cap, that's the whole point. 💅

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✨ NAME ✨

vnl-sort — sorts an vnlog file, preserving the legend 🦋

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🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

let's look at a vibe check first. here's our lil test file:

$ cat a.vnl
# a b
AA 11
bb 12
CC 13
dd 14
dd 123

Sort lexically by a:

$ <a.vnl vnl-sort -k a
# a b
AA 11
CC 13
bb 12
dd 123
dd 14

Sort lexically by a, ignoring case:

$ <a.vnl vnl-sort -k a --ignore-case
# a b
AA 11
bb 12
CC 13
dd 123
dd 14

Sort lexically by a, then numerically by b:

$ <a.vnl vnl-sort -k a -k b.n
# a b
AA 11
CC 13
bb 12
dd 14
dd 123

Sort lexically by a, then numerically by b in reverse:

$ <a.vnl vnl-sort -k a -k b.nr
# a b
AA 11
CC 13
bb 12
dd 123
dd 14

Sort by month and then day:

$ cat dat.vnl
# month day
March 5
Jan 2
Feb 1
March 30
Jan 21

$ <dat.vnl vnl-sort -k month.M -k day.n
# month day
Jan 2
Jan 21
Feb 1
March 5
March 30

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💖 DESCRIPTION 💖

Usage: vnl-sort [options] logfile logfile logfile ... < logfile

so basically: this tool sorts given vnlog files in various ways. it's a wrapper around the GNU coreutils sort tool, and because it's a wrapper, most commandline options and behaviors of sort are present — go consult the sort(1) manpage for detail, iykyk.

here's the tea on how it's different from GNU coreutils sort:

• the input and output to this tool are vnlog files, complete with a legend. periodt.
• the columns are referenced by name, not index. so instead of saying

sort -k1

to sort by the first column, you say

sort -k time

to sort by column "time". iconic, honestly.

• the fancy "KEYDEF" spec from sort is only partially supported. only full fields are allowed here, so the start/stop positions don't make sense. the "OPTS" are supported though — those change the type of sorting in a given particular column. for instance, to sort by month and then by day, do this (see example above):

vnl-sort -k month.M -k day.n

• --files0-from is not supported due to lack of time 😭. if somebody really needs it, talk to me.
• --output is not supported due to an uninteresting technical limitation. the output always goes to standard out.
• --field-separator is not supported because vnlog assumes whitespace-separated fields.
• --zero-terminated is not supported because vnlog assumes newline-separated records.
• by default the "sort" tool gets called to do the actual work. if the underlying tool has a different name or lives in an odd path, you can specify it by passing --vnl-tool TOOL.

past all that, everything sort does is supported, so go read that man page for detailed documentation. 🌈

heads up bestie: all non-legend comments are stripped out, since it's not obvious where they should end up. don't come for me. 💀

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🫶 COMPATIBILITY 🫶

I use GNU/Linux-based systems exclusively, but everything has been tested functional on FreeBSD and OSX in addition to Debian, Ubuntu and CentOS. I can imagine there's something I missed when testing on non-Linux systems, so please let me know if you find any issues. 💜

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🔥 SEE ALSO 🔥

sort(1)

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🎀 REPOSITORY 🎀

https://github.com/dkogan/vnlog/

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🌟 AUTHOR 🌟

Dima Kogan "<dima@secretsauce.net>"

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⭐ LICENSE AND COPYRIGHT ⭐

Copyright 2018 Dima Kogan "<dima@secretsauce.net>"

This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2.1 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

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and that's the whole page, bestie 💖 this one's from the vnlog manual, dated 2026-01-26 — go sort something slayfully, and remember: legend stays, comments go ✨🦋🎀