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Top Forums UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers How do I specify tab as field separator for sort? Post 70176 by SSteve on Tuesday 26th of April 2005 02:32:34 PM
Old 04-26-2005
Thanks for the quick reply, but that doesn't seem to work. Here's a sample input file where I've converted the tabs to vertical bars:

a album|c song|2
b album|d song|2
a album|a song|4
a album|b song|1
b album|z song|1
b album|a song|3
a album|f song|3
b album|c song|4

(The real file is an exported playlist from iTunes. This is a simplified test version.) I want to sort by album, then track number. With this file, sort -t\| -k 1,1 -k 3,3n works fine. But with the real file that contains tabs, nothing works. I tried sort -t `/bin/echo '\t'` -k 1,1 -k 3,3n but it sorts by the entire line just like everything else I've tried.
 

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TABMERGE(1p)						User Contributed Perl Documentation					      TABMERGE(1p)

NAME
tabmerge - unify delimited files on common fields SYNOPSIS
tabmerge [action] [options] file1 file2 [...] Actions: --min Take only fields present in all files [DEFAULT] --max Take all fields present -f|--fields=f1[,f2] Take only the fields mentioned in the comma-separated list Options: -l|--list List available fields --fs=x Use "x" as the field separator (default is tab " ") --rs=x Use "x" as the record separator (default is newline " ") -s|--sort=f1[,f2] Sort data ASCII-betically on field(s) --stdout Print data in original delimited format (i.e., not in a table format) --help Show brief help and quit --man Show full documentation DESCRIPTION
This program merges the fields -- not the rows -- of delimited text files. That is, if several files are almost but not quite entirely unlike each other in their structure (in their field names, numbers or orders), this script allows you to easily unify the files into one file with all the same fields. The output can be based on fields as determined by the three "action" flags. For the following examples, consider three files that contain the following fields: +------------+---------------------------------+ | File | Fields | +------------+---------------------------------+ | merge1.tab | name, type, position | | merge2.tab | name, type, position, lod_score | | merge3.tab | name, position | +------------+---------------------------------+ To list all available fields in the files and the number of times they are present: $ tabmerge --list merge* +-----------+-------------------+ | Field | No. Times Present | +-----------+-------------------+ | lod_score | 1 | | name | 3 | | position | 3 | | type | 2 | +-----------+-------------------+ To merge the files on the minimum overlapping fields: $ tabmerge merge* +----------+----------+ | name | position | +----------+----------+ | RM104 | 2.30 | | RM105 | 4.5 | | TX5509 | 10.4 | | UU189 | 19.0 | | Xpsm122 | 3.3 | | Xpsr9556 | 4.5 | | DRTL | 2.30 | | ALTX | 4.5 | | DWRF | 10.4 | +----------+----------+ To merge the files and include all the fields: $ tabmerge --max merge* +-----------+----------+----------+--------+ | lod_score | name | position | type | +-----------+----------+----------+--------+ | | RM104 | 2.30 | RFLP | | | RM105 | 4.5 | RFLP | | | TX5509 | 10.4 | AFLP | | 2.4 | UU189 | 19.0 | SSR | | 1.2 | Xpsm122 | 3.3 | Marker | | 1.2 | Xpsr9556 | 4.5 | Marker | | | DRTL | 2.30 | | | | ALTX | 4.5 | | | | DWRF | 10.4 | | +-----------+----------+----------+--------+ To merge and extract just the "name" and "type" fields: $ tabmerge -f name,type merge* +----------+--------+ | name | type | +----------+--------+ | RM104 | RFLP | | RM105 | RFLP | | TX5509 | AFLP | | UU189 | SSR | | Xpsm122 | Marker | | Xpsr9556 | Marker | | DRTL | | | ALTX | | | DWRF | | +----------+--------+ To merge the files on just the "name" and "lod_score" fields and sort on the name: $ tabmerge -f name,lod_score -s name merge* +----------+-----------+ | name | lod_score | +----------+-----------+ | ALTX | | | DRTL | | | DWRF | | | RM104 | | | RM105 | | | TX5509 | | | UU189 | 2.4 | | Xpsm122 | 1.2 | | Xpsr9556 | 1.2 | +----------+-----------+ To do the same but mimic the original tab-delimited input: $ tabmerge -f name,lod_score -s name --stdout merge* name lod_score ALTX DRTL DWRF RM104 RM105 TX5509 UU189 2.4 Xpsm122 1.2 Xpsr9556 1.2 Why would you want to do this? Suppose you have several delimited text files with nearly the same structure and want to create just one file from them, but the fields may be in a different order in each file and/or some files may contain more or fewer fields than others. (As far-fetched as it may seem, it happens to the author more than he'd like.) SEE ALSO
o Text::RecordParser o Text::TabularDisplay AUTHOR
Ken Youens-Clark <kclark@cpan.org>. LICENSE AND COPYRIGHT
Copyright (C) 2006-10 Ken Youens-Clark. All rights reserved. This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; version 2. This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details. perl v5.10.1 2010-07-26 TABMERGE(1p)
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