"Sort Lines in Selection" for Xcode 4

You can do this with Automator:

• Start Automator and select either:
  "Service" for macOS 10.7 or
  "New Document" followed by "Quick Action" for macOS 11
• Find and drag "Run Shell Script" into the workflow panel
• Select "Output replaces selected text"
• Type sort -f into the "Run Shell Script" textfield
• Save

Now you can sort lines in any textfield. Select some text and right-click or Control click and select the service you just created.

After 4 years Xcode still doesn't have this feature builtin, but now it supports extensions. So here you go: "xcsort" is an extension tosort text in Xcode 8. It adds a command to sort lines in selection.

How

In TextMate, open the bundle and see how they have implemented it ;)

Specifically, they have used sort -f for that command.

In Xcode

Xc4 doesn't offer external commands, but Xc3 did... what version are you using?

Here's an overview for Xc3's script system: http://www.mactech.com/articles/mactech/Vol.23/23.01/2301XCode/index.html

Xc4 allows you to run an external script via Behaviours, but you cannot pass or return text/selection.

AppleScript

You may be able to do it with AppleScript... every time I have tried to do anything nontrivial with AS + Xcode, it didn't work out very reliably (if at all). But that was with Xc3 - locating what you need may be easier with Xc4 (unified UI and all).

I just use TextMate for this.