The Perils of Sorting IPv6 Addresses with Unix Tools

This article delves into the challenges of sorting IPv6 addresses using standard Unix command-line tools like 'sort'. The complexities arise from IPv6's hexadecimal representation, missing leading zeros, and the '::' shorthand notation. The author argues that a straightforward solution requires transforming IPv6 addresses into their full, expanded form or employing a programming language like Perl or Python for effective sorting, as existing Unix utilities are ill-equipped to handle the nuances of IPv6 address formatting directly.