Sort

Arranges the input lines into sequence.

Sort Type
The sort type controls the method by which items are sorted. The available options are:

• ANSI sort (case insensitive)
  ANSI sort (case sensitive) - faster than case insensitive as no case-mapping is performed
• ASCII sort (case insensitive)
  ASCII sort (case sensitive) - faster than case insensitive as no case-mapping is performed
• Numeric sort
  Sort by length of line

An ANSI sort is locale-specific (ie can vary from country to country). Lower case letters generally have lower codes than upper case letters, hence a word will sort in lower case before the same word in upper case e.g. 'Freddo' will appear before 'FREDDO'. This is opposite to an ASCII sort where upper case words appear first.

An ASCII sort is based on the ASCII code (or binary value) of each letter in a word. Upper case letters have lower codes than lower case letters, and hence the word 'HELLO' will appear before the word 'hello'.

Both ANSI and ASCII sorting have a case-sensitive and case-insensitive sort. With case-sensitive sorts, the word 'Volkswagon' is different to the word 'volkswagon'. With a case-insensitive, the word 'BMW' is the same as the word 'bmw'.

Numeric sort allows lines to be sorted according to their numeric value. The numeric value must appear at the start of the line (leading spaces are allowed). The number must be in decimal, and can be in floating point format. Any non-numeric characters after the number are ignored. If the line has no valid numeric value it is given a value of 0. If you have dates formatted in YYYYMMDDHHMMSS order you can easily sort by date based on the value.

Sort by length of line allows lines to be sorted by their length. This can be handy for detecting lines in database extracts which are longer or shorter than they are allowed to be.

Sort by date and time allows lines to be sorted by a date and time value. The value must use the current locale’s date/time format. In the US, this is commonly MM/DD/YY HH:MM:SS format. Specifying AM or PM as part of the time is optional, as are the seconds. Use 24-hour time (7:45 PM is entered as 19:45, for example) if AM or PM is not specified.

Sort by date allows lines to be sorted by a date value. The value must consist of two or three numbers, separated by the character defined by the current's locale's Date Separator. The order for month, day, and year is determined by the current locale--possible combinations are m/d/y, d/m/y, and y/m/d. If the value contains only two numbers, it is interpreted as a date (m/d or d/m) in the current year.

Sort by time allows lines to be sorted by a time value. The value must consist of two or three numbers, separated by the current locale's Time Separator character, optionally followed by an AM or PM indicator. The numbers represent hour, minute, and (optionally) seconds, in that order. If the time is followed by AM or PM, it is assumed to be in 12-hour clock format. If no AM or PM indicator is included, the time is assumed to be in 24-hour clock format.

Remove duplicate lines
Lines with the same sort value can be kept or removed.

Note that there is no way of knowing which line from a group of lines with the same sort value will actually be kept. eg. with input of 'AAA', 'BBB', 'CCC' in a Sort by length of line, there is no way of knowing which of the 3 lines will actually appear in the output as each has a length of 3 and therefore appears to be the same.

Descending order
Arranges the output in descending order (highest value first). The default (unchecked) is to sort in ascending order (lowest value first).

Start column
The Start Column field allows you to ignore leading characters before a comparison is made. This can be very useful for ignoring line numbers is source code etc.

When the Start Column is 1, and the Length is 4096 or more, the sort is optimized compared to selecting a subset of each line. All lines are compared for their entire width.

It can also be used (in conjunction with an external sort program) to remove duplicates from an unsorted file. First add line numbers to every line. Then use an external sort program on the file, ignoring the line numbers (the first 6 columns). Then use this filter (with Ignore Leading Characters set to 6) to remove duplicate lines. Finally, remove the line numbers using the Remove Columns (remove first 6 columns) filter.

Length
The comparison can also ignore trailing characters if desired, by setting the length to less than the length of the line.

When the Start Column is 1, and the Length is 4096 or more, the sort is optimized compared to selecting a subset of each line. All lines are compared for their entire width.

Maximum Memory to Use
Specifies the maximum MB of physical memory to use, for both TextPipe and the sorting operation. Specify 0 for Automatic - this uses the maximum available physical memory, minus a 30MB safety margin. This option can be very useful in a resource-limited system such as a shared server, where you have limited memory to work with. TextPipe checks the amount of memory in use approximately every 10,000 lines, which is generally around every 0.5 MB of data.

To determine the maximum memory you can use, use Windows Task Manager (Ctrl+Alt+Del) to watch TextPipe's maximum memory consumption. Use this figure, and decrease by 10MB at a time until Out of Memory errors cease.