Sort a List

How to Use This List Sorter

You copied a column from a spreadsheet, exported a JSON array as plain text, or pulled hostnames from a log—and now everything is out of order. Sorting by hand in Notepad is painful, and Excel adds overhead when you only need a clean, reordered list. This list sorter runs entirely in your browser: paste items, pick how to split and sort them, and copy the result in seconds.

Lists can arrive in almost any format—newline columns, comma-separated values, semicolon tables, or mixed delimiters. Tell the tool how to split input items, choose a sort method and direction, then read the sorted output panel. Updates happen live as you type or change options.

• Paste your list into Input List. Default mode expects one item per line (\n separator).
• Set the input separator: use Symbol separator for a single character or escape sequence (\n, ,, ;), or switch to Regex separator for patterns like / +/ (spaces) or /,|;/ (comma or semicolon).
• Choose a sort method: alphabetical (A–Z), numerical (by magnitude), by item length, or by complexity (Shannon entropy—predictable strings like aaaaa sort before random-looking ones).
• Pick sort order—increasing (A→Z, small→large, short→long) or decreasing. Enable Case-sensitive sort in alphabetical mode when capitalized entries must rank separately from lowercase ones.
• Configure output: set a Join symbol for the result (newline, comma, em dash, etc.), and optionally remove duplicates, drop empty items, or trim surrounding whitespace.
• Copy or download the sorted list from the output panel. Click Sort List anytime to refresh manually; the tool also re-sorts automatically as you edit.

Nothing is uploaded to a server—sorting happens locally in JavaScript. Safe for internal SKUs, customer emails, server names, and proprietary data exports.

List Sorter Workflows and Practical Applications

Alphabetical sorting is the everyday fix: dedupe a bibliography, order product names for a dropdown source file, or normalize a mixed-case tag list before import. Turn on case-sensitive mode when celestial body names (capitalized) must stay grouped separately from lowercase geographic terms—as in the reference examples for mixed-case lists.

Numerical sorting handles magnitude correctly—perfect numbers, prices, IDs, and version numbers sort by value instead of lexicographic string order (so 100 follows 28, not 6). Mixed alphanumeric rows still sort sensibly when letters appear alongside digits.

Sort by length helps when row size matters more than content: ordering Pascal’s triangle rows, ranking keywords by character count, or finding the longest lines in a pasted block. Sort by complexity uses character entropy—phone numbers with repeating digits (500-000-0000) float to the top when you want memorable patterns first.

Regex separators shine on messy exports: a car price list split on /,|;/ pulls brands out of semicolon-and-comma tables in one pass. Pair trimming with Remove empty items when source files include blank rows or decorative separator lines.

After sorting, continue cleanup in our Duplicate Line Remover if you need first-occurrence deduping with a removed-lines audit trail. For character counts on the result, paste into the Character Counter. For case normalization before sorting, try the Case Converter.

Frequently Asked Questions