alt Hacker NewsA variant:
docker image ls -a | stdbuf -oL sed -r 's/\s{2,}/\t/g' | { head -n1; tail -n+2 | sort -hrk5 -t$'\t'; } | column -ts$'\t'
sort's -t is set to tab for field separation.
stdbuf sets sed's output to only buffer a line at a time and flush, so the head in the {...} command group doesn't completely consume stdin's contents before it's passed to tail.
The column command recreates the space-aligned table based on tab-delimited input.
There is some cool stuff here.
I like using column to format the table. Appending it to alloyed's command fixes their header problem.
The stdbuf to multi-command block (term.?) is a neat trick. Although, one time when I ran this, I only got a couple lines of output. No idea why and I can't replicate it, but there could be some flakiness that results from the buffering somehow?
Question: how do the ? markers on the sort and column invocations work/what do they do?