Bash itself doesn't sort arrays — you pipe through `sort`. readarray captures the sorted output back into an array, preserving each element verbatim (including spaces).
Bash
arr=("banana" "apple" "cherry" "Apple")
# Alphabetical (case-sensitive by default)
readarray -t sorted < <(printf '%s\n' "${arr[@]}" | sort)
printf '%s\n' "${sorted[@]}"
# Apple
# apple
# banana
# cherry
# Case-insensitive
readarray -t sorted_ci < <(printf '%s\n' "${arr[@]}" | sort -f)
# Numeric sort
nums=(10 1 22 3 8)
readarray -t nsorted < <(printf '%s\n' "${nums[@]}" | sort -n)
echo "${nsorted[@]}" # 1 3 8 10 22Save your own code snippets
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