Text Sorter

How the Text Sorter works

Alphabetical sorting uses your browser's language rules (Intl.Collator), so accented letters sort next to their base letter (é with e) instead of after z. With Natural sort ticked, runs of digits are compared as numbers, so item2 comes before item10. Upper and lower case are treated as equal unless you tick Case sensitive.

Numeric sorting uses the first number found in each line, including negative numbers, decimals, thousands separators such as 1,250.5 and exponents such as 2e3. Lines without a number keep their order and go to the end, in both ascending and descending order. Line length counts characters as they appear on screen, so an emoji counts as one.

All sorts are stable: lines that compare as equal stay in their original order. Reverse simply flips the order of the lines. Shuffle uses the Fisher–Yates algorithm with random numbers from crypto.getRandomValues, so every order is equally likely. Duplicate removal runs after sorting and keeps the first copy of each line; it ignores case unless Case sensitive is ticked.

How to use the Text Sorter

1. Paste your list into the Lines to sort box, one item per line, open a text file, or select Load example.
2. Choose Sort by (alphabetical, numeric, line length, reverse or shuffle) and the Order (ascending or descending).
3. Set the options: Natural sort, Case sensitive, Remove duplicate lines and Remove empty lines.
4. Select Sort lines or press Ctrl + Enter, then copy the result or download it as a .txt file.

Example

These lines:

item10
Banana
item2
apple
item1

sorted alphabetically with natural sort become:

apple
Banana
item1
item2
item10

Without natural sort, item10 would come before item2, because the character 1 sorts before 2.

Common use cases

• Putting a list of names, tags or glossary terms in alphabetical order.
• Ordering file names or version numbers such as v2 and v10 the way people expect.
• Sorting lines of a report by the amount or score they contain.
• Shuffling a list of participants, questions or playlist items into a random order.

Common errors and how to fix them

Numbers sort in the wrong order, such as 10 before 2

The default comparison reads text character by character, and the character 1 comes before 2. Switch to the numeric sort mode.

All capitalised lines group before the lowercase ones

A case-sensitive sort places uppercase letters first. Turn on case-insensitive sorting for the order you probably expect.

Lines that look identical do not end up together

One of them carries trailing whitespace or a different line ending. Run the text through Remove Extra Spaces or the Line Break Formatter first, then sort.

Shuffling needs secure random numbers, which this browser does not provide

The shuffle option uses the Web Crypto API rather than a weaker random source. Update your browser, or load the page over HTTPS.

Frequently asked questions