sorting - Unix sort of version numbers

Question

I have a list of version numbers, let's say for instance that they are in a file versions.txt

1.2.100.4
1.2.3.4
10.1.2.3
9.1.2.3

I wish to sort them so that they are sorted by version. i.e:

1.2.3.4
1.2.100.4
9.1.2.3    
10.1.2.3

I have tried using various sort commands using the "k" parameters, but do not really understand it well enough to pull it off. Any help would be appreciated.

Answer 1

The -V option is the nicest, but I wanted to stay away from installing new/other software since my sort didn’t have that option.

This is the command that worked for me in the end:

sort -t. -k 1,1n -k 2,2n -k 3,3n -k 4,4n test.txt

From comments:

• To reverse the order: sort -t. -k 1,1nr -k 2,2nr -k 3,3nr -k 4,4nr
• To skip the v prefix: sort -t. -k 1.2,1n -k 2,2n -k 3,3n -k 4,4n