List contents of text file in alphabetical order?

Question

I have a txt file with about 3000 name entries on each line. I want to list them in alphabetical order.

Is there any way I can do this via some text editor so that i don't have to manually go through all the names in the list?

Answer 1

You can use a simple command that's included with Windows XP (as that's what I'm assuming you're running from your tag) called sort.

It's as simple as running sort FileToSort.txt /o OutputFile.txt in cmd [replacing FileToSort.txt with the file you want sorted and OutputFile.txt with the name of the file you want to output] (start -> run -> cmd; see here for more examples and usage).

Answer 2

PSPad has a line sorting feature: Edit -> Sort...

ConTEXT has a similar sorting feature.

Or if you can cope with Vim, that has a built-in sort command which works on a range of lines, or on the selected text.

Answer 3

If you want to write a program...

pseudocode (assumes each name is on its own line):

names as List of Strings
while(!file.eof)
{
    names.Add(file.readline());
}

names.Sort();