Sort Lines

Sorting lists the way people expect

Sorting a list sounds simple, but computers and people often disagree about the correct order. A basic computer sort compares text character by character, so 'item 10' comes before 'item 2' because the digit one comes before two. This tool uses natural sorting by default, which reads numbers as numbers and puts 'item 2' before 'item 10'. For most numbered lists, file names and product codes, that is the order people actually want.

Beyond alphabetical order, you can sort from Z to A, sort by line length, or simply reverse the current order. Sorting by length is surprisingly handy. It brings very short entries to the top, which helps when you are looking for typos, stray characters or incomplete lines in a long list. Reversing is useful for logs and timelines where the newest entry should appear first.

A few tips make sorting more reliable. Remove leading spaces first, because a line that starts with a space can sort before every other line and look out of place. Decide whether capital letters should matter; most of the time a case-insensitive sort gives a more natural result. If your list contains duplicates, sort it first and then remove repeats, or use the duplicate remover to keep the first occurrence of each. Teachers sorting student names, shop owners organising product lists and developers tidying configuration files all use the same few steps. Everything runs locally in your browser, so you can sort private lists such as customer names or internal codes without sending them anywhere.