Text Line Sorter

What Is the Text Line Sorter?

This tool sorts a text block's lines -- alphabetically or numerically, ascending or descending -- with an option to also remove duplicate lines in the same pass.

How to Use This Tool

Paste text with one item per line, choose ascending/descending order and alphabetical/numeric mode, and optionally enable duplicate removal. The sorted list appears instantly.

Alphabetical vs. Numeric Sorting

Practical Uses

• Alphabetizing a list of names, tags, or items
• Numerically sorting a column of exported numeric data
• Sorting and deduplicating a list in one pass

To only remove duplicates without sorting, see the Duplicate Line Remover.

A Worked Example

Take the hypothetical lines 10, 9, 100, 2, 25. Sorted alphabetically ascending they become 10, 100, 2, 25, 9, because text comparison goes character by character. Sorted numerically ascending they become 2, 9, 10, 25, 100. Descending simply reverses the sorted order. For a word list such as banana, apple, cherry, alphabetical ascending gives apple, banana, cherry.

How Alphabetical Sorting Behaves

Alphabetical mode uses the browser's locale-aware comparison. In practice that means uppercase and lowercase letters are ordered together rather than all capitals first, and accented letters sit near their base letters, though the exact order depends on your browser's language settings. Lines are compared as they are, so leading spaces matter: a line beginning with a space will sort before lines beginning with letters. Trim your text first if some entries carry stray spaces.

How Numeric Sorting Behaves

• Each line is read as a number from its start. A line like "12 apples" is read as 12, and "3.5kg" as 3.5, while text after the number is ignored for ordering.
• Lines that do not start with a number are treated as zero and gather with genuine zeros.
• Negative numbers and decimals sort correctly. A leading minus sign counts.
• Lines with equal numeric values keep their original relative order, so ties are stable.

Because non-numeric lines act as zero, a column with a header row will place the header among the zeros, not at the top. Remove or re-add the header separately.

Blank Lines and Duplicates

Empty lines are dropped from the sorted output unless your text contains a blank line between two lines, in which case they are all kept and sort to the top in ascending order. If you notice blank lines vanishing or piling up unexpectedly, that is why. The optional duplicate removal compares lines exactly, with case sensitivity, before sorting, so "Apple" and "apple" both remain. To collapse them, use the Duplicate Line Remover in case-insensitive mode first.

Common Mistakes

• Using alphabetical mode for numbers and getting 100 before 20.
• Expecting dates to sort chronologically. Text like 03/15/2025 sorts by characters, so it will not respect real date order unless the format is year first, as in 2025-03-15.
• Expecting numeric mode to handle thousands separators. A value like 1,200 is read as 1, since parsing stops at the comma.

Limits

The tool sorts whole lines, not columns or fields inside a line, and it cannot sort by a second key. It works on one text block in your browser, so very large lists depend on your device.

Frequently Asked Questions