Sort files alphabetically with ls on Linux?

Question

I'm trying to sort files (including hidden files) alphabetically in natural order in Ubuntu Xenial.

I got to this:

ls -l1va

Which prints:

.
..
.ICEauthority
.Private
.Xauthority
.atom
.babel.json
.bashrc
.bash_history
.bash_logout
.cache
.cargo
.config
.dbeaver4
.dbeaver-drivers
.dbus
.docker
.eclipse
.ecryptfs
.electron
.fltk
.gconf
.gem
.gimp-2.8
.gitconfig
.gksu.lock
.gnome
.gnome2
.gnome2_private
.gnupg
.local
.mozilla
.nano
.node-gyp
.npm
.nvm
.pki
.profile
.putty
.recently-used
.selected_editor
.ssh
.sudo_as_admin_successful
.thumbnails
.v8flags.6.2.414.32-node.8.4654dce123559e380233361202560f0e.json
.vmware
.vscode
.vscode-insiders
.wget-hsts
.xsession-errors
.xsession-errors.old
.yarn
.yarnrc
Desktop
Documents
Downloads
Music
Pictures
Projects
Public
Templates
Videos
bin
mnt
tmp

How can I get sorting to be case-insensitive and sort by letter instead of position in ASCII table (which I assume is what makes Z be before a)..?

score 9 · Answer 1 · answered Nov 22 '17 at 21:12

The sort order depends on the locale. The default C locale sorts as in your example:

$ LC_COLLATE=C ls -A
.hidden  Zappa  aardvark  vent  water  zebra

But many others give priority to the letters, and ignore the case and the leading periods:

$ LC_COLLATE=en_US.UTF-8 ls -A
aardvark  .hidden  vent  water  Zappa  zebra

(I wouldn't be surprised if some locales also considered characters like v and w as equal, but I can't come up with one that does that.)

Of course, you need to have those locales on the system. locale -a should show the locales that are currently usable on the system, and you can use locale-gen $localename to generate the ones you're missing. Then there's dpkg-reconfigure locales that shows a list where you can pick which locales to generate.

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Nov 22 '17 at 20:11

2

Setting $LC_COLLATE to an appropriate value will collate the names appropriately.

LC_COLLATE=en_US ls -l1va

Additionally, it can be set in the shell's startup script in order to take effect each time.

export LC_COLLATE=en_US

answered Nov 22 '17 at 20:11

Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams

45,725

1

Yes, I tried that (I have it set to UTF-8.en_US or similar, and also tried your snippet) but it's not working. – nkkollaw Nov 22 '17 at 20:23
"or similar" isn't precise enough. What exactly is it set to? – Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams Nov 22 '17 at 20:24
Sure, it's en_US.UTF-8. Regarless, your command would override it, right? – nkkollaw Nov 22 '17 at 21:49
Yes, it would. The charset shouldn't matter in this case, since the filenames you list only use ASCII. – Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams Nov 22 '17 at 21:52
So, how can I sort alphabetically instead of by order in the ASCII table..? – nkkollaw Nov 22 '17 at 22:00
By specifying the collation. – Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams Nov 22 '17 at 22:01
It' not working, though. Special characters like the dot character should be listed first, and they're listed inbetween other names like the dot wasn't there – nkkollaw Nov 22 '17 at 22:02

score 1 · Answer 3 · edited Jul 03 '20 at 19:57

1

As of Ubuntu 19.10, setting LC_COLLATE=C seems to be insufficient, but setting LC_ALL=C seems to work (such that ls will use ASCII-order for file and directory names).

edited Jul 03 '20 at 19:57

Rayleigh

845

answered Jul 03 '20 at 14:19

R. J. Mathar

121

score 0 · Answer 4 · answered Nov 22 '17 at 22:19

0

The answer wasn't easy to find, but it was here on Stack Exchange.

The "fix" involves editing /usr/share/i18n/locales/iso14651_t1_common, and change the line

<U002E> IGNORE;IGNORE;IGNORE;<U002E> # 47 .

into:

<U002E> <RES-1>;IGNORE;IGNORE;<U002E> # 47 .

See: https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/361006/262190

answered Nov 22 '17 at 22:19

nkkollaw

123

heh, well, I can't say that your question made it clear that you wanted to keep the dotfiles first. – ilkkachu Nov 22 '17 at 22:48
Well, alphabetical order..? Special characters are often (always?) first. – nkkollaw Nov 22 '17 at 22:52
. is punctuation, it's not part of any alphabet. You'll likely find that dictionaries ignore punctuation (space ' -...) in first instance like they ignore case in first instance (but still deterministically sort ABC before (or after depending on the locale's convention) abc for instance. – Stéphane Chazelas Nov 28 '23 at 11:29

Sort files alphabetically with ls on Linux?

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