The natsort shell script is automatically installed when you install natsort with pip.
Below is the usage and some usage examples for the natsort shell script.
usage: natsort [-h] [--version] [-p] [-f LOW HIGH] [-F LOW HIGH] [-e EXCLUDE]
[-r] [-t {digit,int,float,version,ver}] [--nosign] [--noexp]
[--locale]
[entries [entries ...]]
Performs a natural sort on entries given on the command-line.
A natural sort sorts numerically then alphabetically, and will sort
by numbers in the middle of an entry.
positional arguments:
entries The entries to sort. Taken from stdin if nothing is
given on the command line.
optional arguments:
-h, --help show this help message and exit
--version show program's version number and exit
-p, --paths Interpret the input as file paths. This is not
strictly necessary to sort all file paths, but in
cases where there are OS-generated file paths like
"Folder/" and "Folder (1)/", this option is needed to
make the paths sorted in the order you expect
("Folder/" before "Folder (1)/").
-f LOW HIGH, --filter LOW HIGH
Used for keeping only the entries that have a number
falling in the given range.
-F LOW HIGH, --reverse-filter LOW HIGH
Used for excluding the entries that have a number
falling in the given range.
-e EXCLUDE, --exclude EXCLUDE
Used to exclude an entry that contains a specific
number.
-r, --reverse Returns in reversed order.
-t {digit,int,float,version,ver}, --number-type {digit,int,float,version,ver}
Choose the type of number to search for. "float" will
search for floating-point numbers. "int" will only
search for integers. "digit", "version", and "ver" are
shortcuts for "int" with --nosign.
--nosign Do not consider "+" or "-" as part of a number, i.e.
do not take sign into consideration.
--noexp Do not consider an exponential as part of a number,
i.e. 1e4, would be considered as 1, "e", and 4, not as
10000. This only effects the --number-type=float.
--locale, -l Causes natsort to use locale-aware sorting. On some
systems, the underlying C library is broken, so if you
get results that you do not expect please install
PyICU and try again.
natsort was originally written to aid in computational chemistry research so that it would be easy to analyze large sets of output files named after the parameter used:
$ ls *.out
mode1000.35.out mode1243.34.out mode744.43.out mode943.54.out
(Obviously, in reality there would be more files, but you get the idea.) Notice that the shell sorts in lexicographical order. This is the behavior of programs like find as well as ls. The problem is passing these files to an analysis program causes them not to appear in numerical order, which can lead to bad analysis. To remedy this, use natsort:
$ natsort *.out
mode744.43.out
mode943.54.out
mode1000.35.out
mode1243.34.out
$ natsort *.out | xargs your_program
You can also place natsort in the middle of a pipe:
$ find . -name "*.out" | natsort | xargs your_program
To sort version numbers, use the --number-type version option (or -t ver for short):
$ ls *
prog-1.10.zip prog-1.9.zip prog-2.0.zip
$ natsort -t ver *
prog-1.9.zip
prog-1.10.zip
prog-2.0.zip
In general, all natsort shell script options mirror the natsorted() API, with notable exception of the --filter, --reverse-filter, and --exclude options. These three options are used as follows:
$ ls *.out
mode1000.35.out mode1243.34.out mode744.43.out mode943.54.out
$ natsort *.out -f 900 1100 # Select only numbers between 900-1100
mode943.54.out
mode1000.35.out
$ natsort *.out -F 900 1100 # Select only numbers NOT between 900-1100
mode744.43.out
mode1243.34.out
$ natsort *.out -e 1000.35 # Exclude 1000.35 from search
mode744.43.out
mode943.54.out
mode1243.34.out
If you are sorting paths with OS-generated filenames, you may require the --paths/-p option:
$ find . ! -path . -type f
./folder/file (1).txt
./folder/file.txt
./folder (1)/file.txt
./folder (10)/file.txt
./folder (2)/file.txt
$ find . ! -path . -type f | natsort
./folder (1)/file.txt
./folder (2)/file.txt
./folder (10)/file.txt
./folder/file (1).txt
./folder/file.txt
$ find . ! -path . -type f | natsort -p
./folder/file.txt
./folder/file (1).txt
./folder (1)/file.txt
./folder (2)/file.txt
./folder (10)/file.txt