Sort lines of text

Neovim has a built-in :sort command, to sort selected lines of text.

By default lines are sorted in ascending order, although can be sorted in descending order, by numeric values and many other options.

:help sort for the built-in documentation.

All lines

Sort All Lines in the current buffer in ascending order.

:%sort

Selected Lines

Shift+v to visually select one or more lines from the current cursor position.

:sort followed by Enter arranges lines in ascending order.

:sort! followed by Enter arranges lines in descending order.

Unique lines

Shift+v to visually select one or more lines from the current cursor position.

:sort u followed by Enter arranges lines in ascending order, removing any duplications.

:sort! u followed by Enter arranges lines in descending order, removing any duplications.

NOTE: uniq built-in command also removes duplicate lines adjacent to each other.

Sort Options

You can customize the sorting behavior with various flags:

• ! Sort in descending order
• u unique sort, remove duplicate lines during sort
• i Ignore case during sort
• n Sort by numeric values
• f Sorts by floating-point numbers
• x Sorts by hexadecimal numbers
• b Sorts by binary numbers
• o Sorts by octal numbers

Options n, f, x, o, and b are mutually exclusive.

Neovim Plugins

sQVe/sort.nvim sorts by delimiters e.g. commas, pipes, colons, etc. Sort strings with numbers, e.g., "item1", "item2", "item10").