Question

This is List L:

['25', '2', '15', '4', '81', '43'] 

This is the output when I use the command sort(L)

['15', '2', '25', '4', '43', '81'] 

This is what I want as output:

['2', '4', '15', '25', '43', '81'] 

Is there a command to sort numbers in a list as %sort n does in commandline?

Answer 1

This is explained in the documentation. You need to define a function to do the comparison between list entries. The function should return 0 if its arguments are equal, 1 if the the first argument is larger than the second, and -1 if the second argument is larger than the first.

function! MyCompare(i1, i2)
    return a:i1 == a:i2 ? 0 : a:i1 > a:i2 ? 1 : -1
endfunction

Then you can call sort() using your new function as the second argument. Hence:

let list = ['25', '2', '15', '4', '81', '43']
echo sort( list, 'MyCompare' )

will echo

[2, 4, 15, 25, 43, 81]

as expected.