Path: utzoo!censor!geac!torsqnt!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!bbs!ddsw1!dattier
From: dattier@ddsw1.MCS.COM (David W. Tamkin)
Newsgroups: comp.editors
Subject: Re: vi - alphabetical sort
Summary: better to use sort -d
Keywords: alphabetical sort of a file
Message-ID: <1990Dec14.175306.20370@ddsw1.MCS.COM>
Date: 14 Dec 90 17:53:06 GMT
References: <1990Dec12.214128.16549@sunee.waterloo.edu> <110900@convex.convex.com>
Reply-To: dattier@ddsw1.MCS.COM (David W. Tamkin)
Organization: Contributor Account at ddsw1, Wheeling, Illinois
Lines: 31

tchrist@convex.COM (Tom Christiansen) wrote in <110900@convex.convex.com>:

| In article <1990Dec12.214128.16549@sunee.waterloo.edu>
| neman@sunee.waterloo.edu (Neman "Napalm" Syed) writes:
| >Hi!  Another question from another vi-illiterate.  How does one
| >perform an alphabetical sort of all items in a file?  
| 
|     :%!sort
| 
| will do it.

Better by far to use sort -d.  Without -d, period precedes colon, so if you
subscribe to any group whose left-anchored name is included in the name of
another group, your .newsrc will end up in a strange order: rec.humor.d and
rec.humor.funny before rec.humor, alt.bbs.ads and alt.bbs.internet before
alt.bbs, etc.

| Why you would want to go into the editor just to do this, I do not know.

I don't either, unless you're already editing your .newsrc to subscribe or
unsubscribe various groups or to delete the article number listings for
unsubscribed groups.

I occasionally run my own .newsrc through %!sort -d, :g/!..*/s//!/ (to get
rid of the wasted information that gets stuck there whenever an article is
crossposted to both a group I read and a group I don't), and :g/!/m$ (to put
unsubscribed groups at the end; :g/:/m0 would put subscribed groups at the
beginning but it reverses their current order).

David Tamkin  Box 7002  Des Plaines IL  60018-7002  708 518 6769  312 693 0591
MCI Mail: 426-1818  GEnie: D.W.TAMKIN  CIS: 73720,1570   dattier@ddsw1.mcs.com