How to sort lines in Vim

Tomorrow's market run for Byte Burrito is a list everyone added to as things ran out, so it's in the order people remembered them. You want it A to Z before you leave, so you can read down it in the shop.

Press : in Normal mode to open the command line at the bottom of the screen, type sort and press ↵. With nothing in front of it, :sort takes every line in the file. If the result isn't what you wanted, u puts the lines back where they were.

Add u (for unique) and Vim sorts as before, then keeps only the first of each run of identical lines. Identical means every character matches. limes and Limes are two different lines to Vim, and so is limes with a space after it. Add i as well, :sort ui, and lines that differ only in case count as the same.

Tonight's online orders came in out of order, and you want them by order number. Plain :sort compares lines a character at a time, the way a dictionary does, so order 112 lands above order 98 because 1 comes before 9.

Add n and Vim reads the first number on each line and sorts by its value, smallest first. A line with no number in it counts as smaller than any number, so a heading goes to the top. For the biggest first, put ! straight after sort, as in :sort! n. The ! reverses any sort, so :sort! on its own gives Z to A.

In code you rarely want the whole file sorted. In the shop's main file only the imports need it. Sort everything and the blank line jumps to the top, with the export line right under it.

To sort a few lines, select them first. Press V to select the line the cursor is on, stretch the selection with j, then press :. Vim fills in :'<,'>, which means the lines you selected, and you type sort after it. Line numbers work too. :2,$sort sorts from line 2 to the end and leaves a heading on line 1 where it is.

Plain :sort compares lines from their first letter. To sort on a later part of each line, give it a pattern between slashes. Vim finds the pattern on each line and sorts on whatever comes after it.

The kitchen wants tonight's orders grouped by dish so it can make all the burritos together. Every line reads order 112: 3 burritos, and the dish comes after the colon, a space, the quantity and another space. The pattern : \d\+ matches exactly that stretch (\d\+ is one or more digits), so :sort /: \d\+ / sorts on the dish. Lines that tie, like the two burrito orders, keep the order they were in.