Re: Numerically sorted arguments (in shell)

 Janis Papanagnou <janis_papanagnou+ng@hotmail.com>:

How would the main function look like that I could embed in my call to make a numerically sorted list. Say, something like, for example, >
>
  viewer $( p_sort P*.HTM )
>
where p_sort would be the Python code. - Note: this is no appropriate solution since it would anyway not work correctly for file names with embedded blanks and newlines. I just want to get a closer understanding how you think this would be usable in shell (or from shell). Thanks. >

 If ‘p_sort’ is designed to output the sorted file names separated  by an ASCII NUL character rather than a newline then, using the  GNU version of ‘xargs’, one can feed that output into ‘xargs’:    {
     p_sort P*.HTM 3<&- |
     xargs --null --no-run-if-empty -- sh -c \
     'exec 0<&3 3<&- "$@"' sh \
     viewer
   } 3<&0
 This will avoid the problems with funny characters (including  blanks and linefeeds) in filenames processed by the shell.