IPv6 addresses are typically written in canonical text representation recommended by RFC 5952[0]. 1) Regular expression / seamingly lost art of sprintf formatt

IPv6 addresses are typically written in canonical text representation recommended by RFC 5952[0]. 1) Regular expression / seamingly lost art of sprintf formatting are some methods to normalize 001:db8::2:1 to something usable for sorting aka 2001:db8:0000:0000:0000:0000:0002:0001. Perhaps restoring to rfc 5952 format when printing sorted results. 2) Modify hex to 'sortable utf-16 characters', modify back post sort[1] 3) avoid utf-8 / utf-16 issues, use relevant python libraries to handle ipv4/ipv6[2][3],[4]: ip2n < file | sort -n | n2ip ---------------------------- [0] : https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc5952 https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc5952 [1] : https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5797369/unix-sort-utility-use-hexadecimal-byte-value-as-delimiter https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5797369/unix-sort-utilit... [2] : https://stackoverflow.com/questions/75522231/how-to-sort-ipv4-and-ipv6-addresses-together-in-a-dataframe https://stackoverflow.com/questions/75522231/how-to-sort-ipv... [3] : https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/convert-ip-address-to-integer-and-vice-versa/ https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/convert-ip-address-to-integer-... [4] : https://ipfind.com/blog/how-to-convert-ip-address-to-integer-or-long/ https://ipfind.com/blog/how-to-convert-ip-address-to-integer...