natsort

Introduction

Natural sorting is something that can be really useful in *nix shell programming. If you've ever used ls -1v, you've used natural sorting.

Sometimes this type of sorting is needed when ls can't be used (e.g., when lines within a file need to be sorted in this special way). This script solves this problem by providing a more generic interface to the feature.

See the official PHP documentation on the natsort() function. You will find a description of why this tool is useful along with a discussion of its limitations.

Function

The syntax for the invocation of the natsort script is as follows:

natsort [-i] [-r] [--] [FILE, ...]

Each file argument is read into memory, and the collection of lines is sorted before being printed to the standard output. If no arguments are specified, the lines to be sorted are read from the standard input.

The allowed options are:

• -i ignores case
• -r reverses the sort order
• -- signals the end of options, remaining arguments are files

I've found the -i option to be particularly useful.

Suggested Use

When a use case is encountered that requires this utility, it will be quite obvious. This script was written because I grew tired of repeatedly hacking together a solution when this type of sorting was needed.

Use it through your editor or on the command line. It's clean and surprisingly helpful for such a simple script.