Text Sorter

The sort orders

• Alphabetical sorts with the collation rules built into your browser (Unicode CLDR), so accented letters sit next to their plain letters instead of after z. Digits are compared one at a time.
• Natural works the same way but reads numbers inside a line as whole numbers. This is the order you usually want for file names, chapters and versions.
• Numbers looks at the first number in each line, including negative numbers, decimals such as 2.5 or .5, and grouped numbers such as 1,499 or 1,23,456. Lines without a number are placed after the others.
• Length counts visible characters, so an emoji or a Hindi letter with its vowel sign counts as one.
• Reverse lines turns the list upside down without sorting, and Shuffle puts it in random order using your browser's cryptographic random number generator.

Lines that are equal for the chosen order keep their original order. Empty lines are removed by default. If you keep them, the sort orders put them at the end, while Reverse lines and Shuffle move them with the other lines.

Worked example

Take these four file names:

file10.txt
file2.txt
File1.txt
file1.txt

Alphabetical gives File1.txt, file1.txt, file10.txt, file2.txt, because the character 1 in file10 comes before 2. Natural gives File1.txt, file1.txt, file2.txt, file10.txt. File1 and file1 differ only in case: with Case-sensitive off they keep their original order, and with it on the capital comes first.

For numbers, the lines "Price ₹1,499", "Price ₹250", "-5 °C" and "12.5 kg" sort as -5 °C, 12.5 kg, Price ₹250, Price ₹1,499.

Language rules

Alphabetical order is not the same everywhere. With Hindi, Devanagari words come before English ones, in the order of the Hindi alphabet (अ, आ … क, ख). With English rules they come after. Spanish puts ñ after n, Swedish puts ä and ö after z, and Turkish puts the dotless ı before i. Marathi, Bengali, Gujarati, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam and Urdu put their own script first in the same way.

The rules come with your browser. If it has none for the chosen language, the tool uses general rules and tells you. Chrome, for example, has no Punjabi rules, so Gurmukhi words then come after English ones.

Character codes ignores language rules and sorts by Unicode number, as most programming languages do. With Case-sensitive on, the capitals A to Z then come before the small letters a to z (Zebra before apple).

Privacy

Sorting happens in your browser. Long lists are sorted in a background thread so the page stays responsive. Your list is not uploaded or saved.