Line Tools — Sort, Dedupe, Number

A set of line-based text operations — sort, dedupe, trim, shuffle, number — for cleaning up a pasted list, all applied live and stackable, rather than needing a separate tool or spreadsheet trick for each operation.

Sorting

Sort alphabetically (A–Z or Z–A) for names, tags or any text list that should read in order, or by length for spotting the shortest and longest entries in a list — useful for catching obviously wrong or truncated rows in imported data.

Deduplicating and cleaning

Removing duplicate lines is a common cleanup step on lists pulled from multiple sources — merged email lists, combined tag sets, exported data with repeats. Running trim before dedupe matters: a line with trailing whitespace looks identical to the same line without it but won't be recognised as a duplicate unless the whitespace is stripped first, which is why trim runs ahead of dedupe here rather than being a separate optional step.

Case sensitivity

With case-sensitive matching off, 'Apple' and 'apple' collapse into a single line during dedupe — the right setting for most real-world lists, where the same value typed with different casing should count as one entry. Leave it on when case genuinely distinguishes two different things, like case-sensitive variable names or codes.

Shuffle and number

Shuffle randomises line order — for drawing names in a random order, randomising a quiz question sequence, or just breaking up a list that shouldn't read in its original order. Numbering prefixes each line with a sequential index, turning a plain list into a numbered one ready to paste into a document or spreadsheet.