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Alphabetical is wrong for numbered data

This is why a natural sort option exists, and it is the thing worth understanding.

A plain alphabetical sort compares character by character. That puts item10 before item2, because the character 1 comes before 2. Everything with a number in it comes out in an order nobody wants: version numbers, file names, chapter headings, invoice references.

A natural sort recognises runs of digits and compares them as numbers, so item2 precedes item10. The [msm_tool slug="sort-lines"] offers both because both are correct for different data.

Case decides only ties

The sort follows the alphabet first and letter case second, the way a dictionary does. apple and Apple end up next to each other — in most languages the lowercase one comes first — and Zebra still comes after both. Nothing jumps to the top just for starting with a capital.

Ticking the option to ignore case makes apple and Apple equal, so they stay in the order you pasted them. Natural order ignores case regardless.

Accented letters sort where your language puts them

The comparison is the browser's own language-aware one, in the language your browser is set to, rather than a comparison of raw character codes. So é sorts with e, and for an English reader Ångström sits among the A words instead of being pushed past Zulu.

It also means the order follows that language's rules, and those genuinely differ: Swedish puts Å after Z deliberately, German does not, and Spanish used to treat ll as a single letter. For a list meant for readers of another language, set the browser to that language before sorting, or check the result by hand.

Removing duplicates while sorting

Sorting groups identical lines together, which makes deduplication trivial — and the comparison is exact. A trailing space makes two visually identical lines different, and they will both survive.

If a deduplication leaves entries you were sure were duplicates, clean the whitespace first and sort again.

Blank lines and the header row

Two practical traps:

1. Blank lines sort to the top in ascending order, because an empty string sorts before everything. Remove them first unless you want them there.
2. A header row sorts with the data. Paste a list with a heading line and the heading ends up somewhere in the middle. Take it off first and put it back afterwards.

Reverse is not the opposite of natural

Reversing a natural sort gives you natural order descending, which is what you want. Reversing the lines of an already-sorted list also gives descending order for simple data and does not for anything where the sort was doing real work.

Use the descending option rather than sorting and then reversing.

What this is for

• Tidying a list of names, tags, keywords or references into a readable order.
• Finding duplicates in a list by grouping them together.
• Preparing two lists for comparison — sorting both first means a diff shows genuine differences rather than ordering differences.
• Making a long list scannable, which is the everyday case and the reason it exists.

Nothing is uploaded; the sort happens in your browser.