[PLUG] sort option for 'natural' sequence

[Paul Heinlein]

On Tue, 31 Mar 2020, Paul Heinlein wrote:

> On Tue, 31 Mar 2020, tomas.kuchta.lists at gmail.com wrote:
>
>> Everyone has different toolbox and regexp logic wired in their brains.
>> I prefer to break things down somewhat step by step - and think ahead - 
>> mostly
>> it is worth it.
>
> I'm just the opposite; use the simple tool: -V option to GNU sort.

OK, that was too snarky to be helpful.

Rich,

GNU sort has a couple different options for this sort of thing. The -n 
option does a basic numeric sort. It works fine on a list of basic 
numbers.

The -V option is newer and was designed to sort the more complex 
numeric strings in product versions. E.g., 1.0.8 should sort before 
1.0.10. In fact, however, -V is very smart and will handle lots of 
compound numeric strings like M/D/Y strings that aren't zero-padded 
(1/8/2020 sorts before 1/10/2020).

-- 
Paul Heinlein
heinlein at madboa.com
45°38' N, 122°6' W