How to sort the directories in Linux/RHEL

Sort the directories in Linux/RHEL

Generally, we sort the list of the directory in ascending/descending order of the date/time but sometimes we need to sort the list of directories on the basis of the group or owner. Use the below commands to sort the list of directories in different ways.

• ls -l | awk '{print $3, $4, $8, $0}' | sort | column -t
  added the $8 and the column -t for pretty print

• ls -l | sort -k 3 – sorts by owner and by default sorts the next field (group) and on
• ls -l | sort -k 4,4 -k 3 – sorts by group and then by owner
• ls -l | sort -k 3,3 -k 8 – sorts by owner and then by filename

[user@server ~]# ls -l | sort -k 4,4 -k 3
total 2118560
-rw-rw-r-- 1 root       apache        4841403 Jan  9  2017 PKIServer.zip
-rw-r--r-- 1 root       apache           6144 May 25 09:58 frm.css
-rw-r--r-- 1 root       root         20441395 Dec  5  2016 access_log
-rw-r--r-- 1 root       root        243035185 Dec 11  2016 access_log.4_83
-rw-r--r-- 1 root       root          8347982 Dec  5  2016 error_log
-rw-rw-r-- 1 sonu.patel sonu.patel      13507 Aug 10 16:38 home_error.html
drwxrwxr-x 2 sonu.patel sonu.patel       4096 Nov 23  2016 new_ssl_web02