Shell Programming and Scripting

Hello,

How would I sort a file in reverse,?
In other words, my file has that the date for example as :

bob 25years.


I would like it sorted this way :

25years bob.

I did a man on sort but nothing really that helps.

Thanks.

Recheck your man page on sort - look at the examples. You should have something like the following:

EXAMPLES
In the following examples, first the preferred and then the
obsolete way of specifying sort keys are given as an aid to
understanding the relationship between the two forms.

Example 1: Sorting with the second field as a sort key

Either of the following commands sorts the contents of
infile with the second field as the sort key:

example% sort -k 2,2 infile
example% sort +1 -2 infile

Example 2: Sorting in reverse order

Either of the following commands sorts, in reverse order,
the contents of infile1 and infile2, placing the output in
outfile and using the second character of the second field
as the sort key (assuming that the first character of the
second field is the field separator):

example% sort -r -o outfile -k 2.2,2.2 infile1 infile2
example% sort -r -o outfile +1.1 -1.2 infile1 infile2


If you still need assistance, post the OS and version along with any further questions.

I did use
sort -r -o zz -k 2.2,2.2 z

it created the new outfile of zz but kept them in the same order

bob 25years.


I wanted to reverse it to

25years bob


...unless the syntax is still wrong ??

OS: Solaris 8

Try this

awk '{ print $2, $1 }' file1 ,if you just want to print

or

awk '{ print $2, $1 }' file1 > file2
cat file2

I guess I was thinking too hard...
Thanks a lot "thumsup9" , that worked like a charm !