Sorting bash arguments alphabetically

Question

How can I take sort bash arguments alphabetically?

$ ./script.sh bbb aaa ddd ccc

and put it into an array such that I now have an array {aaa, bbb, ccc, ddd}

Answer 1

You can do:

A=( $(sort <(printf "%s\n" "$@")) )

printf "%s\n" "${A[@]}"
aaa
bbb
ccc
ddd

It is using steps:

1. sort the arguments list i.e."$@"`
2. store output of sort in an array
3. Print the sorted array

Answer 2

I hope following 2 lines will help.

sorted=$(printf '%s\n' "$@"|sort)

echo $sorted

This will give you a sorted cmdline args.I wonder though why its needed :)

But anyway it will sort your cmdlines

Removed whatever was not required.

Answer 3

Here's an invocation that breaks all the other solutions proposed here:

./script.sh "foo bar" "*" "" $'baz\ncow'

Here's a piece of code that works correctly:

array=()
(( $# )) && while IFS= read -r -d '' var
do
  array+=("$var")
done <  <(printf "%s\0" "$@" | sort -z)