---
title: "sort numerically"
seo_description: "how to sort lines numerically in unix shell"
date: 2023-05-11T09:14:37+02:00
draft: false
snippet_types:
- sort
---

Working with with sitemap xml files in AWS S3 today and the default sort is a bit hard to read. 

Example: 

```shell
$ aws s3 ls s3://cool-bucket | awk '{print $4}'
sitemap.brands.xml
sitemap.episode.0.xml
sitemap.episode.1.xml
sitemap.episode.10.xml
sitemap.episode.11.xml
sitemap.episode.2.xml
sitemap.episode.20.xml
sitemap.episode.21.xml
sitemap.episode.22.xml
sitemap.episode.23.xml
...
```

Using `sort -V` it sorts the lines numerically!

Working example: 

```shell
$ aws s3 ls s3://cool-bucket | awk '{print $4}' | sort -V
sitemap.brands.xml
sitemap.xml
sitemap.episode.0.xml
sitemap.episode.1.xml
sitemap.episode.2.xml
sitemap.episode.3.xml
sitemap.episode.4.xml
sitemap.episode.5.xml
sitemap.episode.6.xml
sitemap.episode.7.xml
...
```