File: coreutils.info,  Node: Version sort overview,  Next: Version sort implementation,  Up: Version sort ordering

30.1 Version sort overview
==========================

“Version sort” puts items such as file names and lines of text in an
order that feels natural to people, when the text contains a mixture of
letters and digits.

   Lexicographic sorting usually does not produce the order that one
expects because comparisons are made on a character-by-character basis.

   Compare the sorting of the following items:

     Lexicographic sort:          Version Sort:

     a1                           a1
     a120                         a2
     a13                          a13
     a2                           a120

   Version sort functionality in GNU Coreutils is available in the ‘ls
-v’, ‘ls --sort=version’, ‘sort -V’, and ‘sort --version-sort’ commands.

* Menu:

* Using version sort in GNU Coreutils::
* Version sort and natural sort::
* Variations in version sort order::