Natural Sorting in Neovim

To achieve natural numeric sorting (1, 2, 3, 10) in Neovim, you can use a custom sorting command rather than the default :sort u, as it performs a lexicographical sort by default.

Select the lines you want to sort in visual mode (v or V):

:'<,'>!sort -n

• !sort -n pipes the selected lines to the Unix sort command with numeric sorting (-n flag).

Method 2: Add a Key Mapping

If you often need this, you can add a custom key mapping to your Neovim configuration file (~/.config/nvim/init.lua or lua/custom/mappings.lua for NVChad users).

Add this snippet:

vim.keymap.set('v', '<leader>sn', ":'<,'>!sort -n<CR>", { noremap = true, silent = true })

• Usage: In visual mode, press <leader>sn to sort selected lines numerically.