What is this?

Omegasort is a text file sorting tool that aims to be the last sorting tool you'll need.

I wrote this because I like to keep various types of files in a sorted order (gitignore files, lists of spelling stopwords, etc.) and I wanted a tool I could call as part of my commit hooks and CI (using precious).

Installation

There are several ways to install this tool.

Use ubi

Install my universal binary installer (ubi) tool and you can use it to download omegasort and many other tools.

$> ubi --project houseabsolute/omegasort --in ~/bin

Binary Releases

You can grab a binary release from the releases page. Untar the tarball and put the executable it contains somewhere in your path and you're good to go.

usage: omegasort [<flags>] [<file>]

Flags:

Short	Long	Description
-h	--help	Show context-sensitive help (also try --help-long and --help-man).
	--version	Show application version.
-s	--sort=SORT	The type of sorting to use. See below for options.
-l	--locale=""	The locale to use for sorting. If this is not specified the sorting is in codepoint order.
-c	--case-insensitive	Sort case-insensitively. Note that many locales always do this so if you specify a locale you may get case-insensitive output regardless of this flag.
-r	--reverse	Sort in reverse order.
	--windows	Parse paths as Windows paths for path sort.
-i	--in-place	Modify the file in place instead of making a backup.
	--stdout	Print the sorted output to stdout instead of making a new file.
	--check	Check that the file is sorted instead of sorting it. If it is not sorted the exit status will be 1.
	--debug	Print out debugging info while running.
	--docs	Print out extended sorting documentation.

Args:

• [<file>] The file to sort.

Sorting Options:

• text - sort the file as text according to the specified locale
• numbered-text - sort the file assuming that each line starts with a numeric prefix, then fall back to sorting by text according to the specified locale
• datetime-text - sort the file assuming that each line starts with a date or datetime prefix, then fall back to sorting by text according to the specified locale
• path - sort the file assuming that each line is a path, sorted so that deeper paths come after shorter
• ip - sort the file assuming that each line is an IP address
• network - sort the file assuming that each line is a network in CIDR form

Text

This sorts each line of the file as text without any special parsing. The exact sorting is determined by the --locale, --case-insensitive, and --reverse flags. See below for details on how locales work.

Numbered Text

This assumes that each line of the file starts with a numeric value, optionally followed by non-numeric text.

Lines should not have any leading space before the number. The number can either be an integer (including 0) or a simple float (no scientific notation).

The lines will be sorted numerically first. If two lines have the same number they will be sorted by text as above.

Lines without numbers always sort after lines with numbers.

This sorting method accepts the --locale, --case-insensitive, and --reverse flags.

Path Sort

Each line is treated as a path.

The paths are sorted by the following rules:

• Absolute paths come before relative.
• Paths are sorted by depth before sorting by the path content, so /z comes before /a/a.
• If you pass the --windows flag, then paths with drive letters are sorted based on the drive letter first. Paths with drive letters sort before paths without them.

This sorting method accepts the --locale, --case-insensitive, and --reverse flags in addition to the --windows flag.

Datetime Sort

This sorting method assumes that each line starts with a date or datetime, without any space in it. That means datetimes need to be in a format like "2019-08-27T19:13:16".

Lines should not have any leading space before the datetime.

This sorting method accepts the --locale, --case-insensitive, and --reverse flags.

IP Sort

This method assumes that each line is an IPv4 or IPv6 address (not a network).

The sorting method is the same as if each line were the corresponding integer for the address.

This sorting method accepts the --reverse flag.

Network Sort

This method assumes that each line is an IPv4 or IPv6 network in CIDR notation.

If there are two networks with the same base address they are sorted with the larger network first (so 1.1.1.0/24 comes before 1.1.1.0/28).

This sorting method accepts the --reverse flag.