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Full Discussion: sort script
Top Forums Shell Programming and Scripting sort script Post 302713531 by LMHmedchem on Wednesday 10th of October 2012 11:56:39 PM
Old 10-11-2012
Quote:
Originally Posted by jim mcnamara
IMO: your idea lacks merit.

You should simply insert the data into a db with a loader, then produce output. If you have Excel you have MS office and probably a db like Access. UNIX has free db's: mysql, Berekely db, etc.

So, Why does your idea look like reinventing the wheel?

The reason is that Don Cragun is right. You have to have complete metadata for each and every column to be able to sort based on arbitrary column selections. And there is too much metadata to cobble together anything useful in shell. Metadata can change. db's are meant for that contingency.

The way it is now, you have to know what you are sorting by looking at it - in effect gathering metadata. You have to use human intelligence to make decisions. Then use unix sort/Excel sort. Databases are meant to do this. You just tell db's to sort on column names, optionally: ascending or descending for each column. You can write database scripts (SQL language for example) to do stats or a lot of what you already can do in Excel.

So, stay in Excel or move to a db. I vote for a db.
Yes, a database would be nice. I am in the process of working on a database system for some of this data, but there are non-trivial issues with other parts of it not related to this, so I am finishing what I am working on using some scripting tools that I already have. The sorting is the only part of the process that is not already scripted, so I am having to open each file in excel, set up a sort, save the file, and then do some shell to get the txt file back to linux land. All of these sorts are on ints and in ascending order. I have a few hundred to do, so after the first several, I started thinking that there had to be a better way.

I am in one of those situations where the choice is between slogging through an inefficient process, or taking allot of time to set up the correct process. I don't know SQL at all, so I am reluctant to spend days getting all of that set up when the sort function is the only thing that I can't automate. Of course, after taking the time to learn and set it up, I would have learned more tools, and that is not a small thing in any way. Eventually I will do all of the steps I am doing now with SQL queries out of SQLite, using ruby scripts to populate the database (and eventually a browser interface). For now, someone is waiting on the results for this and I need to get it done as quickly as possible. Even if I have to hard code modify a separate script for each sorting criteria, that will still be much faster than all the excel, especially since I have to modify the resulting excel file. I will have to do this process again with other data, so once the scripts are set up, I should be able to automate the entire process.

I was thinking that if I was going to set up a sort script, I might as well try to make is a general a tool as possible so that it could be useful for other things. It does appear that there is allot of possible variation in how the script would need to operate in different cases, so perhaps my thinking was not realistic. Never the less, it would be a significant help with my current project and would not need to be generalized for that purpose.

LMHmedchem
 

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LEARN ABOUT SUSE

slapo-valsort

SLAPO-VALSORT(5)						File Formats Manual						  SLAPO-VALSORT(5)

NAME

       slapo-valsort - Value Sorting overlay to slapd

SYNOPSIS

       /etc/openldap/slapd.conf

DESCRIPTION

       The  Value Sorting overlay can be used with a backend database to sort the values of specific multi-valued attributes within a subtree. The
       sorting occurs whenever the attributes are returned in a search response.

       Sorting can be specified in ascending or descending order, using either numeric or alphanumeric sort methods.  Additionally,  a	"weighted"
       sort  can  be specified, which uses a numeric weight prepended to the attribute values.	The weighted sort is always performed in ascending
       order, but may be combined with the other methods for values that all have equal weights. The weight is specified by prepending an  integer
       weight  {<weight>} in front of each value of the attribute for which weighted sorting is desired. This weighting factor is stripped off and
       never returned in search results.

CONFIGURATION

       These slapd.conf options apply to the Value Sorting overlay.  They should appear after the overlay directive.

       valsort-attr <attribute> <baseDN> (<sort-method> | weighted [<sort-method>])
	      Configure a sorting method for the specified attribute in the subtree rooted at baseDN.  The sort-method may be one of alpha-ascend,
	      alpha-descend, numeric-ascend, or numeric-descend.  If the special weighted method is specified, a secondary sort-method may also be
	      specified. It is an error to specify an alphanumeric sort-method for an attribute with Integer or NumericString syntax, and it is an
	      error to specify a numeric sort-method for an attribute with a syntax other than Integer or NumericString.

EXAMPLES

	    database bdb
	    suffix dc=example,dc=com
	    ...
	    overlay valsort
	    valsort-attr member ou=groups,dc=example,dc=com alpha-ascend

FILES

       /etc/openldap/slapd.conf
	      default slapd configuration file

SEE ALSO

       slapd.conf(5), slapd-config(5).

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

       This module was written in 2005 by Howard Chu of Symas Corporation. The work was sponsored by Stanford University.

OpenLDAP 2.4.21 						    2009/12/20							  SLAPO-VALSORT(5)
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