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I am on Ubuntu 22, and I have a large tree of files with annoying names that include numeric values in a variety of positions. Something like:

./2
./2/9
./2/10
./2/8
./1
./1/2
./1/1
./1/11
./11
./11/page 6
./11/page 05
./11/page 4

I want to sort this according to the numeric values, ignoring anything like 'page', so that I get:

./1/1
./1/2
./1/11
./2/8
./2/9
./2/10
./11/page 4
./11/page 05
./11/page 6

I've tried sort -n but even if I look just at the first-level directory names that doesn't seem to do what I expect:

$ find . -mindepth 1 -type d | sort -n
./1
./11
./2

Is there a handy dandy option out there for "sort by each whole number (not digit)"?

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2 Answers 2

Reset to default
2

It sounds like sort -V is what you want, at least given the simplicity of your example:

$ sort -V << EOF
./2
./2/9
./2/10
./2/8
./1
./1/2
./1/1
./1/11
./11
./11/page 6
./11/page 05
./11/page 4
EOF
./1
./1/1
./1/2
./1/11
./2
./2/8
./2/9
./2/10
./11
./11/page 4
./11/page 05
./11/page 6

One known caveat: this doesn't "ignore" text like "page" in the string, it simply includes it in the sort ordering. If you have other items with "line" and the same numbering, the "line" entries will be sequenced before the "page" entries.

But in general, if this doesn't work for you, please edit your post and update your example to show a sample case that isn't solved correctly.

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  • I just came up with an ugly sed/awk solution but that is exactly what I needed, and much much simpler. Thanks! Commented Jan 22, 2024 at 19:23
  • @superstator If you later find that you have a more complex input stream, your solution may be superior, given the caveat noted in my answer. Commented Jan 22, 2024 at 19:24
1

Using zsh, with its glob qualifiers

  • N to set the NULL_GLOB option
  • . to select only plain files (i.e. omit the directories, symlinks, fifos, devices...)
  • n to turn on the NUMERIC_GLOB_SORT option

So

% print -rC1 -- **/*(N.n)
1/1
1/2
1/11
2/8
2/9
2/10
11/page 4
11/page 05
11/page 6
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