About Line Sorter

Sort lines alphabetically, numerically, reverse, shuffle, or dedupe. Part of the DevTools Surf developer suite. Browse more tools in the Text / String collection.

Use Cases

• Alphabetizing dependency lists in package configuration files
• Deduplicating email lists exported from multiple sources
• Sorting log entries by timestamp for chronological analysis
• Randomizing quiz questions or survey answer choices

Tips

• Deduplicate lines to remove exact repetitions instantly
• Sort numerically for version numbers or ID lists
• Shuffle lines to randomize test data or list ordering

Fun Facts

• The Unix sort command, first written by Ken Thompson in 1973, could handle files larger than available memory using merge sort.
• The fastest known comparison-based sorting algorithm has O(n log n) time complexity, proven optimal by a 1972 information-theoretic argument.
• Fisher-Yates shuffle, used for randomizing lists, was originally described in 1938 by Ronald Fisher and Frank Yates using pencil and paper.

FAQ

Which sort orders are supported?

Alphabetical (ASCII and locale-aware), numerical (treats leading numbers specially), reverse (desc), version-aware (1.2 < 1.10), and random.

How does natural sort differ from alphabetical?

Natural sort treats embedded numbers as numeric values. 'file-1', 'file-2', 'file-10' sort correctly; alphabetical sort produces 'file-1', 'file-10', 'file-2'.

Can I sort by a specific column?

Yes — toggle 'sort by column N' after entering a delimiter. Useful for CSV data and whitespace-separated values.

Will it dedupe while sorting?

Optional — toggle 'sort + dedupe' to combine both operations. Otherwise sort preserves every line including duplicates.