Sort Lines

About Sort Lines

This reorders the lines of a list however you need — alphabetically, in reverse, by the number each line starts with, by length, or shuffled into a random order. It's the fast way to alphabetise a list of names or terms, order values numerically, arrange lines shortest-to-longest, or randomise entries for a draw or a randomised test order. An optional de-duplicate step removes repeats at the same time.

How it works — the sort modes

• A→Z / Z→A — compares lines as text and orders them ascending or descending. With 'ignore case' on, capitalisation doesn't affect the order.
• Numeric — reads the number at the start of each line and sorts by its value, so 2 comes before 10 (unlike text order).
• By length — orders lines from shortest to longest by character count.
• Shuffle — randomly reorders the lines using the Fisher–Yates algorithm, seeded by the browser's cryptographic random generator with rejection sampling, so the shuffle is genuinely unbiased.

With de-duplicate enabled, repeated lines are removed first (respecting the ignore-case setting).

Assumptions and behaviour

• Alphabetical sorting compares by character-code order, not language-aware collation. By default uppercase letters sort before lowercase (so Zebra comes before apple); turn on 'ignore case' for a more intuitive A–Z.
• Numeric mode reads only the leading number of each line; a line with no number at the start is treated as 0.
• Shuffle uses cryptographic randomness with rejection sampling, giving every arrangement an equal chance.

Limitations

• Alphabetical order isn't locale-aware. Accented letters and non-Latin scripts sort by their underlying code points, which may not match dictionary order for your language.
• Numeric sort keys on the first number only — 12 apples sorts by 12, but apples 12 sorts as 0. Mixed text-and-number lines won't sort the way a natural ("human") sort would.
• 'By length' counts UTF-16 code units, so lines heavy in emoji or non-Latin characters may measure longer than they look.
• It sorts whole lines; it can't sort by a column within each line.

Privacy

Sorting happens entirely in your browser. Your list is never uploaded or stored.