Sorting Scientific Number With Unix Sort

Question

I tried to sort these number with Unix sort, but it doesn\'t seem to work:

    2e-13
    1e-91
    2e-13
    1e-104
    3e-19
    9e-99

This is

Answer 1

Ok, here is a not fully tested version of Python script. Supposed usage:

sort_script.py file.txt

Unfortunately I developed this on Windows, and with 2 different versions of Python installed I cannot test it properly. Warning: requires newest Python (with, print functions added or changed). Note: back_to_file flag can be an optional parameter, although with Unix you can always redirect ... even in Windows you can.

#!/usr/bin/env python3.1
# Note: requires newer python

import sys

#Remove this line:
sys.argv = ('', 'file.txt')

assert(len(sys.argv) == 2)

with open(sys.argv[1], 'r') as fin:
    lines = fin.readlines()

lines_sorted = sorted(lines, key=lambda x: float(x))

back_to_file = False # Change this if needed

if back_to_file:
    with open(sys.argv[1], 'w') as fout:
        fout.writelines(lines_sorted)
else:
    for lns in lines_sorted:
        print(lns, end='') # Suppress new line