sort handles ascending order. Three properties are worth knowing before relying on it in a pipeline.
Stability is not the default
A stable sort preserves the relative order of equal keys. GNU sort is not stable unless given -s. When sorting by a secondary field, instability silently reshuffles rows that tie — which matters whenever the existing order carried information.
Locale decides the comparison
LCALL=C gives byte order: deterministic, fast, and it places all uppercase before all lowercase. A language locale gives case-insensitive, accent-aware ordering that varies between systems. For anything feeding comm or join, force LCALL=C on every step so the orderings agree.
It already handles huge files
sort performs an external merge sort, spilling to temporary files when input exceeds memory. It will sort a file far larger than available RAM without complaint — -S tunes the buffer and -T chooses the spill directory, which matters when /tmp is small.
Try it: Sort A to Z on SeoWolf's Notepad.