How to sort alphanumeric numbers in the shell

Question

The input file has the following data:

abc90
cd 18
bc14de
100def

The output should be:

bc14de
cd 18
abc90
100def

Is there any command sort

for sorting only by number embedded in alphanumeric data?

I tried this but it doesn't work the way I want:

# sort -g FileName

+3

unix bash sh

Sriram P 08 Aug 15 at 3:08

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1 answer

anubhava · Accepted Answer · 2015-08-08T03:27:05+0000

You can use:

awk -v OFS='\t' '{rec=$0; gsub(/[^[:digit:]]+/, "", rec); print rec, $0}' file
    | sort -nk1 | cut -d $'\t' -f2-
bc14de
cd 18
abc90
100def

awk

used to add first column of input with numeric characters only with gsub
sort -nk1

used to sort input numerically in the first column
cut

finally used to truncate the first column