Sort numbers with multiple decimals in bash

Question

In bashuse sortwith the option -ndoes not give the expected result.

$ cat numbers | sort -n
1.0
1.1
1.11.4
1.15
1.3
1.3.3
1.4-p1
1.6.1
2.2.10
2.2.2
2.4
2.4.6

I tried to use -k1, -k1.1netc. ( -k1.3ngets the order correct only for numbers starting with 1). It seems that there is something very simple, I'm not here ...

Answer 1

You need -t. flag to indicate '.' both your separator and the position qualifiers with several keywords process gradually longer / deeper numbers. I still don't quite understand how this works, but it works ...

 sort -t. -k 1,1n -k 2,2n -k 3,3n -k 4,4n numbers

or

 cat numbers | sort -t. -k 1,1n -k 2,2n -k 3,3n -k 4,4n

Answer 2

-V

$ sort -V numbers

1.0
1.1
1.3
1.3.3
1.4-p1
1.6.1
1.11.4
1.15
2.2.2
2.2.10
2.4
2.4.6

. GNU Coreutils .

Answer 3

sort -g numbers

It will do. According to the sorting man page, it is -gintended for numerical sorting:

-g, --general-numeric-sort

compare by total numerical value