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Full Discussion: linux sort command
Homework and Emergencies Homework & Coursework Questions linux sort command Post 302708723 by bakunin on Tuesday 2nd of October 2012 05:28:42 AM
Old 10-02-2012
There are some "sort" intrinsics to be considered and i think you haven't covered them all yet. This might not have any impact on your test file, but may well change the sorting order in another sample.

Lets see:

The default behavior of "sort" is to sort from the field/position given in te argument to the "-k" option to the end of line. That means:

Code:
sort -k 2 /some/file

will sort on field 2 first, in case f2 is equal on field 3, if this is equal too on field 4, etc. to the end of line. As you want to search on a last name - first name basis you have to state that:

Code:
sort -k 2,2 -k 1,1

You are lucky that you use only full fields, because it is possible to base sorting order on a sub-field starting at the n-th character of a certain field. Alas, character-numbering is sometimes 1-based and sometimes zero-based, depending on "-t" or "-b" being used - as i learned myself recently the hard way.

I hope this helps.

bakunin
 

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SORT(1) 						      General Commands Manual							   SORT(1)

NAME
sort - sort a file of ASCII lines SYNOPSIS
sort [-bcdfimnru] [-tc] [-o name] [+pos1] [-pos2] file ... OPTIONS
-b Skip leading blanks when making comparisons -c Check to see if a file is sorted -d Dictionary order: ignore punctuation -f Fold upper case onto lower case -i Ignore nonASCII characters -m Merge presorted files -n Numeric sort order -o Next argument is output file -r Reverse the sort order -t Following character is field separator -u Unique mode (delete duplicate lines) EXAMPLES
sort -nr file # Sort keys numerically, reversed sort +2 -4 file # Sort using fields 2 and 3 as key sort +2 -t: -o out # Field separator is : sort +.3 -.6 # Characters 3 through 5 form the key DESCRIPTION
Sort sorts one or more files. If no files are specified, stdin is sorted. Output is written on standard output, unless -o is specified. The options +pos1 -pos2 use only fields pos1 up to but not including pos2 as the sort key, where a field is a string of characters delim- ited by spaces and tabs, unless a different field delimiter is specified with -t. Both pos1 and pos2 have the form m.n where m tells the number of fields and n tells the number of characters. Either m or n may be omitted. SEE ALSO
comm(1), grep(1), uniq(1). SORT(1)
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