Sorting 1 before 10 in bash

Question

I'm sorting numerically on a specific column of a ; separated file with:

sort -k3n file

But numbers 10 and 11 are sorted before 1. How do I fix this?

Answer 1

If your fields are separated with something else than a blank, you can use the --field-separator or -t option, like so:

sort -k3n -t\; file

Answer 2

The -n option should do the trick. Can you check that this doesn't output the order you want?

echo -e "1\n10\n11\n2"|sort -n