On Thu, Jan 08, 2009 at 01:20:42PM +0000, George B. wrote:
-n, --numeric-sort
compare according to string numerical value
The info docs are perhaps more illuminating:
`-n'
`--numeric-sort'
Sort numerically. The number begins each line and consists of
optional blanks, an optional `-' sign, and zero or more digits
possibly separated by thousands separators, optionally followed by
a decimal-point character and zero or more digits. An empty
number is treated as `0'. The `LC_NUMERIC' locale specifies the
decimal-point character and thousands separator. By default a
blank is a space or a tab, but the `LC_CTYPE' locale can change
this.
The key thing is that the number has to be at the beginning (it doesn't
try to skip over non-numeric content to find a number).
If you have freedom to create the names you can specify something like
word-number, which makes the sorting much easier:
sort -t - -k 1,1 -k 2,2n
The info page ("info coreutils sort") also has a number of examples.
[rant]The last block about POS makes my head hurt. I love Linux, but
why does it have to be so difficult to do something as simple getting
a numerically sorted list of files?[/rant] :-(
Well, if it's just a list of files you can do this:
ls -v
Mike Stone
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