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Line Sorter

Sort lines alphabetically, by length, naturally, or randomly. Remove duplicates and trim whitespace. Supports ascending, descending, and custom sort modes.

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How to Use

  1. 1

    Paste your lines

    Enter one item per line in the input area — a list of names, URLs, log entries, or any text.

  2. 2

    Choose sort mode and options

    Select a sort mode from the dropdown. Optionally check 'Remove duplicates' and 'Trim lines'.

  3. 3

    Click Sort

    The sorted result appears in the output area. Click Copy to copy it to your clipboard.

What is Line Sorter?

A line sorter takes a block of text, splits it into individual lines, and reorders them according to the selected sorting method. This online tool is useful for organizing lists, sorting CSV data, deduplicating log entries, alphabetizing imports, and cleaning up any line-based text. It is the browser equivalent of `sort` on the command line, but with more sort modes and a visual workflow.

This tool offers 9 sorting modes: alphabetical (ascending/descending, case-sensitive/insensitive), by line length, natural sort (handles numbers intelligently — file1, file2, file10 instead of file1, file10, file2), reverse order, and random shuffle. Optional features include removing duplicate lines and trimming leading/trailing whitespace from each line so duplicates aren't missed because of stray spaces.

To deduplicate without sorting (preserving original order), use the [Duplicate Line Remover](/tools/duplicate-line-remover/). To clean whitespace before sorting, run [Whitespace Cleaner](/tools/whitespace-cleaner/) first. To count lines after sorting, see [Line Counter](/tools/line-counter/).

FAQ

What is natural sort?
Natural sort orders strings the way a human would — it treats numbers within strings as numeric values. So 'file1, file2, file10' stays in that order, instead of 'file1, file10, file2' which is what basic alphabetical sort produces.
How does Remove duplicates work?
It keeps only the first occurrence of each unique line and removes all subsequent exact matches. The comparison is case-sensitive — 'Apple' and 'apple' are considered different lines. Use 'Trim lines' together with this to avoid duplicates caused by trailing spaces.
Can I sort CSV data?
This tool sorts whole lines, not individual columns. For CSV data, it will sort rows by the entire line content (starting from the first column). For column-specific sorting, a spreadsheet or dedicated CSV tool is more appropriate.
How is this different from sort on the command line?
Unix `sort` is fast on huge files but only does basic alphabetical sorting by default — for natural sort you need `sort -V`, for case-insensitive `sort -f`, etc. This online tool exposes all common sort modes (natural, length, random, case modes) in a single dropdown, plus optional dedup and trim. For one-off lists or pasted data, the browser tool is more convenient; for scripting and very large files, `sort` is the right tool.

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