Sort a text file by line length including spaces

Question

I have a CSV file that looks like this

AS2345,ASDF1232, Mr. Plain Example, 110 Binary ave.,Atlantis,RI,12345,(999)123-5555,1.56
AS2345,ASDF1232, Mrs. Plain Exampl         


        

Answer 1

The length() function does include spaces. I would make just minor adjustments to your pipeline (including avoiding UUOC).

awk '{ printf "%d:%s\n", length($0), $0;}' "$@" | sort -n | sed 's/^[0-9]*://'

The sed command directly removes the digits and colon added by the awk command. Alternatively, keeping your formatting from awk:

awk '{ print length($0), $0;}' "$@" | sort -n | sed 's/^[0-9]* //'