Package: msort (8.53-2.3 and others)

utility for sorting records in complex ways

msort is a program for sorting files in sophisticated ways. It was originally developed for alphabetizing dictionaries of "exotic" languages, for which it has been extensively used, but is useful for many other purposes. msort differs from typical sort utilities in providing greater flexibility in parsing the input into records and identifying key fields and greater control over the sort order. Its main distinctive features are:

 o Msort can be used as a command-line program or via a graphical user
   interface that is helpful not only to those who find a complicated command
   line difficult to deal with but also to those unfamiliar with the finer
   points of sorting.
 o Records need not be single lines of text but may be delimited in a number
   of ways.
 o Key fields may be selected by position in the record (counting from the
   beginning or the end), by character ranges (e.g. the key consists of the
   fourth through eighth characters), or by matching a regular expression to
   a tag.
 o For each key an arbitrary sort order may be specified. Msort also
   understands locales.
 o For each key an effectively unlimited number of multigraphs (sequences
   of characters to be treated as a single unit for purposes of sorting,
   "collating elements" in Unicode parlance) of effectively unlimited length
   may be defined.
 o In addition to the usual lexicographic and numerical comparisons, msort
   supports hybrid lexicographic-numeric comparison (for things like filenames
   and section headings, so that, e.g., 2a will precede 10b), random
   comparison, and ordering by angle, date, time, month name, domain name,
   email address, ISO8601 date-time, and string length.
 o Numbers may be in just about any known number system, e.g. Chinese or
   Devanagari.
 o For each key a distinct set of characters may be excluded from
   consideration when sorting in any combination of initial, final, and
   medial position in the key field.
 o For each key a distinct set of regular expression substitutions may be
   defined. These provide the means to make names like McCarthy sort before
   MacCawley, as if McCarthy were spelled MacCarthy as well as to handle the
   rare cases in which a single character is treated for purposes of sorting
   as a sequence, such as German "eszet" sign, which is traditionally sorted
   as if it were ss.
 o Lexicographic keys may be reversed, allowing the construction of reverse
   dictionaries.
 o Any or all keys may be optional. For optional keys, the user may specify
   how records missing the key field should compare to records in which the
   key field is present.
 o A choice of sorting algorithms with different properties is provided.

msort understands UTF-8 Unicode. Unicode may be used anywhere that text is entered: in the text to be sorted, in sort order and exclusion definitions, as a field or record separator, or as a field tag. Full Unicode case-folding is available.

Tags: Implemented in: C, User Interface: Command Line, Role: role::program, use::organizing, Works with: Text, Unicode

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