Advanced Sort/Options (Windows only)

This command allows you to set the sort options and perform a sort of the active file.  The sort is performed on the complete file unless a portion is selected.  If a portion is selected, just the selected portion will be sorted.  However ALL the lines selected will be sorted, not just selected columns if in column mode.

When this option is selected, a dialog is presented with the following options:

Sort Order

Ascending                This sets the sort for ascending order ('a' to 'z', 0-9) and is the default.

Descending             This sets the sort for descending order ('z' to 'a', 9-0).

Remove duplicates

If this is checked, then the associated radio button options Where all selected keys match and Where any selected keys match become active and may be selected.  

If Where all selected keys match is selected, duplicate strings/characters must exist in ALL active sort keys for a line to be considered a duplicate and be removed.  If Where any selected keys match is selected, a line is considered a duplicate if duplicate strings/characters exist in ANY of the active sort keys.  Active keys are designated using the checkboxes under the RD heading.  This allows the user greater flexibility in determining which defined keys are used for the Remove duplicates sort operation.

Ignore case

If the Ignore case option is set, lines are considered identical if the characters are the same with the only difference being the case of them.  This option should be checked if you want the search to be insensitive to case, i.e. "CAT" is considered the same as "cat".  Do not check this option if the sort should consider "cAT" different from "cat".

Numeric sort

If this is checked, the sort will perform a numeric sort on the selected columns.  Typically a sort is non-numeric and the values 1,11,111 would be sorted before 2,22,222 as 1 comes before 2.  If a numeric sort is selected, the values would be sorted in numeric order (1,2,11,12,111,222).  The numeric sort is not possible with a locale specific sort or when using the alternate sort method.  The numeric sort option should only be used with numeric characters.

Sort Columns

Up to 4 sort keys may be selected to sort on.  Each sort key contains a range of columns that will be sorted.  The normal value for the range is from column 1 to 9216.

The start and end columns for unused keys should be set to 0.  If multiple keys are used, the sort order is based on the first key, followed by the second key, etc.

To sort by complete line set the start column to 1 and the end column to