yq
v4.x
v4.x
  • yq
  • How It Works
  • Recipes
  • Upgrading from V3
  • Commands
    • Evaluate
    • Evaluate All
    • Shell Completion
  • Operators
    • Add
    • Alternative (Default value)
    • Anchor and Alias Operators
    • Array to Map
    • Assign (Update)
    • Boolean Operators
    • Collect into Array
    • Column
    • Comment Operators
    • Compare Operators
    • Contains
    • Create, Collect into Object
    • Date Time
    • Delete
    • Divide
    • Document Index
    • Encode / Decode
    • Entries
    • Env Variable Operators
    • Equals
    • Eval
    • File Operators
    • Filter Operator
    • Flatten
    • Group By
    • Has
    • Keys
    • Kind
    • Length
    • Line
    • Load
    • Min
    • Map
    • Max
    • Modulo
    • Multiply (Merge)
    • Omit
    • Parent
    • Path
    • Pick
    • Pipe
    • Pivot
    • Recursive Descent (Glob)
    • Reduce
    • Reverse
    • Select
    • Shuffle
    • Slice Array
    • Sort
    • Sort Keys
    • Split into Documents
    • String Operators
    • Style
    • Subtract
    • Tag
    • To Number
    • Traverse (Read)
    • Union
    • Unique
    • Variable Operators
    • With
  • Usage
    • Output format
    • Working with CSV, TSV
    • Working with JSON
    • Working with Properties
    • Working with XML
    • Working with LUA
    • Working with TOML
    • Working with Shell Output
    • Front Matter
    • Split into multiple files
    • GitHub Action
    • Tips, Tricks, Troubleshooting
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  • Sort keys of map
  • Sort keys recursively

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  1. Operators

Sort Keys

PreviousSortNextSplit into Documents

Last updated 2 months ago

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The Sort Keys operator sorts maps by their keys (based on their string value). This operator does not do anything to arrays or scalars (so you can easily recursively apply it to all maps).

Sort is particularly useful for diffing two different yaml documents:

yq -i -P 'sort_keys(..)' file1.yml
yq -i -P 'sort_keys(..)' file2.yml
diff file1.yml file2.yml

Note that yq does not yet consider anchors when sorting by keys - this may result in invalid yaml documents if you are using merge anchors.

For more advanced sorting, you can use the function on a map, and give it a custom function like sort_by(key | downcase).

Sort keys of map

Given a sample.yml file of:

c: frog
a: blah
b: bing

then

yq 'sort_keys(.)' sample.yml

will output

a: blah
b: bing
c: frog

Sort keys recursively

Note the array elements are left unsorted, but maps inside arrays are sorted

Given a sample.yml file of:

bParent:
  c: dog
  array:
    - 3
    - 1
    - 2
aParent:
  z: donkey
  x:
    - c: yum
      b: delish
    - b: ew
      a: apple

then

yq 'sort_keys(..)' sample.yml

will output

aParent:
  x:
    - b: delish
      c: yum
    - a: apple
      b: ew
  z: donkey
bParent:
  array:
    - 3
    - 1
    - 2
  c: dog
sort_by