Updated on February 17, 2026 in #linux

Using Command Groups to Sort Multiple Commands in a Shell Script

You may want to combine the output of multiple commands and then sort all of them together. You can use command groups.

I’ve written about command groups { ... } before when redirecting multiple commands to a file. It’s POSIX complaint and I like learning by example so here’s another use case.

Here’s a practical example from my dotfiles’ install script to quickly browse all of your local files by assembling a list of files, sorting them and then displaying them in fzf:

    {
      fd --type file --unrestricted --extension "local" .
      fd --type file --unrestricted ".local/bin/local"
      echo ".config/zsh/.zsh_history"
      echo "install-config"
    } | sort --unique | fzf --multi --preview='bat --color=always {}' --bind "ctrl-a:toggle-all"

The real takeaway is each of those commands within { ... } produce 1 or more lines of output, in this case relative path files.

In the context of my dotfiles, local files are your personalized non-git committed files. It’s handy to be able to see them all in 1 place.

The demo video breaks apart this command and shows how it works.

# Demo Video

Timestamps

• 0:14 – Quick example using sort
• 0:37 – Practical example to build a file browser with fzf

When was the last time you used command groups? Let me know below.