CODEWITHSUNDEEP
bashunixsorting
user393144
user393144

Reputation: 1635

ordering in bash "for" loop

Is there any way to control the sorting that occurs when I run a, for i in * ; do; echo $i; done; in my directory. It seems to always use ascii sorting. Anyway to do a numeric sort?

Thanks, Vivek

Upvotes: 6

Views: 7578

Answers (4)

shellter
shellter

Reputation: 37298

How about making your filenames so they sort naturally as numbers, i.e. padded with leading zeros. Instead of 1 .. 10 .. 100, use 001 ..010 .. 100?

To include sub-directories: 

for i in $( ls -d * | sort -n ); do echo $i; done;

To exclude sub-directories:

for i in $( ls | sort -n ); do echo $i; done;

I hope this helps.

Upvotes: 7

jlliagre
jlliagre

Reputation: 30833

for i in $(ls | sort -n) ; do echo $i ; done

Upvotes: 0

Xtroce
Xtroce

Reputation: 1826

you can use the ordering from ls [sorting options] that you give for the directory with i.e.

      for i in `ls -X` ; do
             echo $i
      done

first the ls command with a certain sorting is executed, in the example case sorting for extension then you give out the the list with a for loop

Upvotes: 0

bos
bos

Reputation: 6555

You can always use sort(1) and its numeric sort:

for i in $(ls -1 * | sort -n) ; do echo $i ; done

Upvotes: 6

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