What is the difference between alphabetical and natural sort?

Alphabetical sort compares characters in order, so item10 comes before item2 because the character 1 sorts before 2. Natural sort understands embedded numbers, so item2 comes before item10 the way a human expects. Use natural sort for filenames, version strings or anything mixing words and numbers.

How does the numeric sort decide the order?

Numeric sort reads the first number it finds in each line (including negatives and decimals) and orders by that value. Lines with no number sink to the bottom. So "10 apples" sorts after "9 apples" rather than before it, which a plain alphabetical sort would get wrong.

Does removing duplicates keep the first or last occurrence?

It keeps the first occurrence of each line and drops every later repeat, preserving the earliest position. Turn on "Case sensitive" if you want Apple and apple treated as different lines; with it off they count as the same.

In what order are the operations applied?

The pipeline runs top to bottom: trim each line, remove blank lines, remove duplicates, sort or reorder, add the prefix and suffix, then add line numbers last. Numbering is applied at the end so the numbers always stay on the far left, even after a prefix is added.

Can I number lines starting from a value other than 1?

Yes. Enable "Number lines" and set the start value to any integer, including 0 or a large offset. The numbers are right-padded to a consistent width so the list stays aligned, and you can change the separator between the number and the text.

Is my text uploaded anywhere?

No. Every operation runs entirely in your browser using JavaScript — your text never leaves the page and nothing is sent to a server. Your current input and option settings are auto-saved only in this browser's local storage so they survive a refresh.

Line Sort & Dedupe Tool

The Line Sort & Dedupe tool is an all-in-one workbench for cleaning up and reordering lists of text. Paste any list — email addresses, CSV column values, log lines, to-do items, keywords, filenames — and reshape it in a single pass: sort, deduplicate, reverse, shuffle, trim, number and add a prefix or suffix to every line. It is built for the moments when a list arrives messy and you need it tidy now, without opening a spreadsheet or writing a throwaway script.

Most online line tools do exactly one thing. This one chains the common operations into a single predictable pipeline, so you can dedupe and alphabetise and number a list in one click rather than copy-pasting between three separate pages. Everything updates live as you type, and a running counter shows how many lines went in, how many came out, and how many duplicates or blanks were removed.

How it works

Your text is split into lines (Windows CRLF, classic Mac CR and Unix LF endings are all normalised), then passed through a fixed pipeline. First each line is optionally trimmed of leading and trailing whitespace. Next blank lines are dropped if you asked for it. Then duplicates are removed, keeping the first occurrence — case-insensitively by default, or exactly if you enable case sensitivity. The list is then sorted by your chosen mode: plain alphabetical, locale-aware natural sort (so item2 precedes item10), numeric by the first number on each line, by length, simply reversed, or randomly shuffled. Finally your prefix and suffix are wrapped around each line and, if enabled, line numbers are prepended with a custom start value and separator. The result lands in the output box ready to copy or download as a .txt file.

A handy Output → input button feeds the result straight back into the input box, letting you stack operations that can’t all happen at once — for example, dedupe first, eyeball the result, then number the survivors.

Example

Say you paste a raw list with mixed case, stray spaces and repeats:

banana
Apple
cherry
apple
  date
banana

Turn on Trim, Remove duplicates and Alphabetical A → Z, and the output becomes a clean, sorted, unique list:

apple
banana
cherry
date

Add the prefix - and enable numbering from 1, and you get a ready-to-paste Markdown checklist:

1. - apple
2. - banana
3. - cherry
4. - date

Every transformation happens locally in your browser, so even long or sensitive lists never leave your machine.