yq/operators/sort-keys.md

# Sort Keys

The Sort Keys operator sorts maps by their keys (based on their string value). This operator does not do anything to arrays or scalars (so you can easily recursively apply it to all maps).

Sort is particularly useful for diffing two different yaml documents:

```bash
yq eval -i 'sortKeys(..)' file1.yml
yq eval -i 'sortKeys(..)' file2.yml
diff file1.yml file2.yml
```

## Sort keys of map

Given a sample.yml file of:

```yaml
c: frog
a: blah
b: bing
```

then

```bash
yq eval 'sortKeys(.)' sample.yml
```

will output

```yaml
a: blah
b: bing
c: frog
```

## Sort keys recursively

Note the array elements are left unsorted, but maps inside arrays are sorted

Given a sample.yml file of:

```yaml
bParent:
  c: dog
  array:
    - 3
    - 1
    - 2
aParent:
  z: donkey
  x:
    - c: yum
      b: delish
    - b: ew
      a: apple
```

then

```bash
yq eval 'sortKeys(..)' sample.yml
```

will output

```yaml
aParent:
  x:
    - b: delish
      c: yum
    - a: apple
      b: ew
  z: donkey
bParent:
  array:
    - 3
    - 1
    - 2
  c: dog
```