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Sort Lines
Sort Lines is part of Toolspire and is ready as soon as this page loads. Upper case sorts before lower case in this Unicode order, so C comes before a. Numbers are not sorted numerically: 10 comes before 2.
On this page
What you can do here
One line, one item
Commas do not split a line. “Ana Lopez” stays together.
Case is significant
C is not folded into c. A dictionary order would differ.
The source box is not replaced
The sorted copy is the result. Shuffle and sort can be compared.
The sequence
How to use the Sort Lines
- 1
Put one item on each line
A sentence with no line break is one item.
- 2
Expect capitals first
If you wanted a, b, C regardless of case, this order will surprise you. It is the code-point order.
- 3
Do not use it for 1, 2, 10
Those sort as text. 10 comes first.
Worth knowing
- Sort Lines on Toolspire: lines are ordered with locale-independent code-point order, after trimming.
- b, a, C becomes C, a, b, because the code point of C is before a.
- Blank lines are dropped, not sorted to the top as empty strings you still see.
- 10 sorts before 2. This is not a numeric sort.
Alphabetical here means code points
The sort compares the trimmed lines as text. Uppercase letters have smaller code points than lowercase letters, so C precedes a. That is stable and boring, and it is not the order a phone book uses when it ignores case. Numeric strings are text too, so “10” is less than “2” because “1” is less than “2”. Blank lines are removed so they do not form a block of empties at one end.
FAQ
Questions about Sort Lines
Where does Sort Lines run?
How do b, a and C sort?
Why is C before a?
Will 2 come before 10?
Are blank lines kept?
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