Sort lines

Tip 1166 Printable Monobook Previous Next

created 2006 · complexity basic · author Robert Stovall · version 7.0

Vim has a very powerful built-in sort utility, or it can interface with an external one. In order to keep only unique lines in Vim, you would:

:{range}sort u

Yes, it's that simple.

You could create a range in advance, such as 'a,. (from mark 'a' to the current line) or you could create one on-the-fly using visual selection by pressing ':' in visual mode, after selecting the text you wish to sort, to get a range of '<,'> on the command line.

If you like using an external sort utility instead, you can do it just as easily. For example, Unix sort, removing duplicate lines:

:{range}!sort -u

Many other systems also have an external sort utility, but the options and capabilities will differ. It is probably better to use the built-in Vim sort unless you are looking for a specific feature of the external sort (or using an old Vim without the :sort command).

Examples

Sort in reverse

:%sort!

Sort, removing duplicate lines

:%sort u

Sort using the external Unix sort utility, respecting month-name order

:%!sort -M

("respecting month-name order" means January < February < ... < December)

Numeric sort

:sort n

(this way, 100 doesn't precede 20 in the sort)

Sort subsections independently, in this example sort numbers between "start" and "end" markers

:g/start/+1,/end/-1 sort n

Sort only specific lines using ranges

sort lines 296 to 349, inclusive

:296,349sort

Sort by pattern

When working with Javascript ES6, it may be useful to sort your imports

import './ProjectTemplateEditModal.scss';
import * as _ from "lodash";
import Moment from 'moment';
import React from 'react';
import { Button, Col, Modal, Row, Label } from 'react-bootstrap';
import { CurrencyControl } from '../../Core/Components/Controls';
import { DynamicModalMixin } from '../../Core/Components/Modals';
import { ProjectTemplateStore } from '../Stores/ProjectTemplateStore';
import { StoreBinder } from '../../Core/Utils/StoreBinder';
import { TextAreaControl } from '../../Core/Components/Controls/TextAreaControl';
import { TextBoxControl } from '../../Core/Components/Controls/TextBoxControl';
import { TooltipWrapper } from '../../Core/Components/Tooltips/TooltipWrapper';
import { withRouter } from 'react-router';

It is possible to pass a regex expression to sort. Any lines that do not match the expression will be sorted normally, while lines that do match will be sorted on the text that follows the expression.

:{range}sort /\/[A-z]/

This will organize your imports relative to the "package" they are related to:

import * as _ from "lodash";
import Moment from 'moment';
import React from 'react';
import { Button, Col, Modal, Row, Label } from 'react-bootstrap';
import { withRouter } from 'react-router';
import { CurrencyControl } from '../../Core/Components/Controls';
import { TextAreaControl } from '../../Core/Components/Controls/TextAreaControl';
import { TextBoxControl } from '../../Core/Components/Controls/TextBoxControl';
import { DynamicModalMixin } from '../../Core/Components/Modals';
import { TooltipWrapper } from '../../Core/Components/Tooltips/TooltipWrapper';
import { StoreBinder } from '../../Core/Utils/StoreBinder';
import './ProjectTemplateEditModal.scss';
import { ProjectTemplateStore } from '../Stores/ProjectTemplateStore';

References

:help :sort

Comments

TO DO

Probably need some general :sort command info.
Give examples of numeric sort and using regex sort.
Clean up my "see also" list. It's useful now for a comprehensive list of related tips, some of which need work. At least should add a note on point of tip.
If we're going to mention an external sort tool, we may as well include the following with a brief explanation. Vim could do this, but only with a complex regex. Or perhaps better, mention it in VimTip374 or VimTip923 in "see also". -k2 sorts on the second field (word by default).

:!sort -k2

This misguided snippet was added recently:

delimit the column using some char here I have | symbol as delimiter, once did with that you can use below command to sort specific column use -n if u want to sort numeric and its working on some version of vi and not on ubuntu vi :(

/|.*|/ | sort

used to match a patern |.*| used to match words delimited between || and | as piping commend and sort to sort

This is wrong and should never work. Here's what it is actually doing:

/|.*|/: jump to the next line that has two '|' characters in it, anywhere

|: command separator, this lets you start a new command on the current line

sort: do a default sort of the entire buffer

Basically this is the equivalent of typing :%sort.

Now, what you CAN do, is provide a pattern that the :sort command will skip over and ignore at the start of every line while sorting. For example, to sort based only on text after the last '|' character on the line (what I think was intended by the example), you'd do this:

:sort /^.*|/