Homework & Coursework Questions

Hey Don I think your right. I used that solution first but I felt it was too trivial initially. Now thinking about it again, I definitely think I read into the question a bit much. Thank you for your help. @bartus11 I will definitely try your script again and or use it for further reference. Thanks a lot.

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

Very close... According to the standards (and the sort utilities I've used tend to follow the standards pretty closely), what you said about sort -k 2 is exactly correct. But, sort -k 2,2 sorts on the 2nd field and if two or more lines compare equal on that field, the entire line is used as the secondary sort key. So sort -k 2,2 performs exactly the same sort as sort -k 2,2 -k 1,1.

Thanks everyone. I appreciate your help.