sort

Randomizing an Array with Sort

How to randomize an array? Use the sort command, with the option:

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-R, --random-sort
    sort by random hash of keys

For example:

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$ seq 1 10 | sort -R
4
2
10
6
3
9
7
5
8
1
$ seq 1 10 | sort --random-sort
9
6
1
3
2
8
7
5
4
10

Listing Tags in Natural Sort of Version Numbers

Using the Node.js repository as an example:

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$ git remote -v
origin  https://github.com/nodejs/node.git (fetch)
origin  https://github.com/nodejs/node.git (push)

If we would like to list all tags with v0.12 versions, we could do:

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$ git tag -l 'v0.12.*'
v0.12.0
v0.12.1
v0.12.10
v0.12.11
v0.12.12
v0.12.13
v0.12.14
v0.12.15
v0.12.2
v0.12.3
v0.12.4
v0.12.5
v0.12.6
v0.12.7
v0.12.8
v0.12.8-rc.1
v0.12.9

However, v0.12.2 should come after v0.12.1.

To fix it, we use the sort command with option:

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-V, --version-sort
    natural sort of (version) numbers within text

Thus:

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$ git tag -l 'v0.12.*' | sort --version-sort
v0.12.0
v0.12.1
v0.12.2
v0.12.3
v0.12.4
v0.12.5
v0.12.6
v0.12.7
v0.12.8
v0.12.8-rc.1
v0.12.9
v0.12.10
v0.12.11
v0.12.12
v0.12.13
v0.12.14
v0.12.15