sort and uniq in Linux CLI - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Sort and Uniq Command Practice

📖 Scenario: You have a list of fruit names with some duplicates. You want to organize this list by sorting it alphabetically and removing duplicates to get a clean list.

🎯 Goal: Learn how to use the sort and uniq commands together to sort a list and remove duplicate entries.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a file named fruits.txt with the exact fruit names given.

Use the sort command to sort the fruit names alphabetically.

Use the uniq command to remove duplicate fruit names after sorting.

Display the final sorted and unique list on the terminal.

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Cleaning and organizing lists of data like names, products, or logs is common in daily computer tasks.

💼 Career

Many IT and data jobs require sorting and filtering text data quickly using command line tools.

1

Create the fruits.txt file

Create a file named fruits.txt containing these exact lines in this order: apple, banana, apple, orange, banana, grape.

Linux CLI

# Create the file fruits.txt with the fruit names
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use echo with -e and newline characters \n to create the file.

2

Sort the fruits.txt file

Use the sort command on fruits.txt and save the output to a new file called sorted_fruits.txt.

Linux CLI

echo -e "apple\nbanana\napple\norange\nbanana\ngrape" > fruits.txt
# Sort fruits.txt and save to sorted_fruits.txt
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use sort fruits.txt > sorted_fruits.txt to save sorted output.

3

Remove duplicates with uniq

Use the uniq command on sorted_fruits.txt and save the output to a new file called unique_fruits.txt.

Linux CLI

echo -e "apple\nbanana\napple\norange\nbanana\ngrape" > fruits.txt
sort fruits.txt > sorted_fruits.txt
# Use uniq on sorted_fruits.txt and save to unique_fruits.txt
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use uniq sorted_fruits.txt > unique_fruits.txt to remove duplicates.

4

Display the final unique sorted list

Use the cat command to display the contents of unique_fruits.txt on the terminal.

Linux CLI

echo -e "apple\nbanana\napple\norange\nbanana\ngrape" > fruits.txt
sort fruits.txt > sorted_fruits.txt
uniq sorted_fruits.txt > unique_fruits.txt
# Display the contents of unique_fruits.txt
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use cat unique_fruits.txt to show the final list.