Re: Sort by version number (patch included)

[Padraig Brady]

Ian Dall wrote:

> I needed to sort by version number so that 1.2.12 > 1.2.3
>
> This is pretty trivial as there is a function strverscmp() in libc,
> and I have prepared a patch, including documentation and Changelog
> Entries.
>
> Ian
>
> doc/Changelog:
>
> 2005-11-02  Ian Dall  <address@hidden>
>
>         * coreutils.texi (sort invocation): Document new option
>         --version-sort (-v).
>  

Thanks.
I agree that this would be very useful.
Please compare to the existing functionality in ls though.
I prefer the more general mechanism of a --sort= parameter
as I can see many other possible methods (like random for e.g.).

For reference here is what ls does:

$ ls -1
file1-1.23.tar.gz
file1-1.4.tar.gz
file2-1.4-12.tar.gz
file2-1.4-1.tar.gz
file2-1.4-2.tar.gz
file2-1.4.tar.gz

$ ls -1 --sort=version
file1-1.4.tar.gz
file1-1.23.tar.gz
file2-1.4-1.tar.gz
file2-1.4-2.tar.gz
file2-1.4-12.tar.gz
file2-1.4.tar.gz