How to sort explicitly positive and negative numbers with GNU sort?

Question

Given a file containing the following numbers:

+1.4
+12.3
-1.0
-4.2

How would one sort it with GNU sort in numerical order?

Using -n or -h doesn't seem to work: the + character is not being treated correctly?

$ echo "+1.4\n+12.3\n-4.2\n-1.0" | sort -h
-4.2
-1.0
+12.3
+1.4

Thanks.

Answer 1

In bash :

echo -e "+1.4\n+12.3\n-4.2\n-1.0" | sort -g

should do the trick. -e with echo interprets escape sequences. -g with sort compares according to general numerical value.

Sample Output

$ echo -e "+1.4\n+12.3\n-4.2\n-1.0" | sort -g
-4.2
-1.0
+1.4
+12.3

^{Sidenote: In some shells, echo -e is the default behavior. Check [ this ] ...}

Answer 2

One option is stripping the + characters, sorting, then adding them again.

$ echo "+1.4\n+12.3\n-1.0\n-4.2" \
    | sed 's/^\+//' \
    | sort -h \n
    | sed -E 's/^([^-])/\+\1/
-4.2
-1.0
+1.4
+12.3