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I'm trying to sort the output of the md5sum program by file name, numerically (that is, file names all match log-\d+\.txt). I tried 

sort -g "-t " -k 2 CHECKSUMS

but it sorts by checksum. Using 

sort "-t " -k 2 CHECKSUMS

does sort by filename, but log-12.txt is placed before log-2.txt.

Any clues? Thanks!

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try this:

$> sort -t '-' -k 2 -n CHECKSUMS

it splits the line d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e log-1.txt at the - ... so the number is the firstmost string which allows sort to do the right thing(tm).

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What if the number of dashes was not the same in every file (e.g. a-1, a-2, a-a-1, b-1, b-a-a-1, b-a-b-1, b-a-b-2, ...)? Is there a way to tell sort to start comparing numerically as soon as it finds a number in both strings being compared? – Clément Jan 21 at 18:11
use other means (sed, awk, python, perl etc) to extract the number, put it infront of the filename and then use sort ... – akira Jan 22 at 7:27
Ok, did it with awk. – Clément Jan 22 at 23:18
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