"file10" sorts before "file2" alphabetically — which is correct for strings but wrong for filenames. Here's natural sort vs lexicographic sort, locale-aware collation for multilingual names, multi-column SQL ORDER BY, and why stable vs unstable sort algorithms matter in practice.
Bubble sort handles 1,000 items fine but takes hours on 1 million. Quicksort handles both in milliseconds. Here's how common sorting algorithms actually work, why O(n log n) is the comparison sort lower bound, and what TimSort is doing inside Python and Java.
Learn how to sort any text list alphabetically, numerically, by length, or randomly, why numerical sort differs from alphabetical for numbers, and how to use a free sort lines tool for any list.
