Hi,

Could someone please help me with this? I have a text file that has fields seperated by comma. The last column in it has multiple values seperated by "|". I need to sort values in the last column seperated by pipe..is there any way I can do this through script?

Sample text file -

TEST1,ABC,5|4|1|3|2
TEST2,DEF,10|7|25|11|52|19
TEST3,XYZ,5|11|52|1

TEST1,ABC,1|2|3|4|5
TEST2,DEF,7|10|11|19|25|52
TEST3,XYZ,1|5|11|52

Try this:

$ cat ./sort_fields.ksh
#!/bin/ksh

sort_array()
{
  set -A LOCALARRAY $1

  LOCALARRAY_COUNT=${#LOCALARRAY[*]}

  IDX=0
  TEMP=0
  while (( $IDX < $LOCALARRAY_COUNT ))
  do
    IDX2=`expr $IDX + 1`
    while (( $IDX2 < $LOCALARRAY_COUNT ))
      do
        if (( ${LOCALARRAY[$IDX]} > ${LOCALARRAY[$IDX2]} ))
        then
           TEMP=${LOCALARRAY[$IDX]}
           LOCALARRAY[$IDX]=${LOCALARRAY[$IDX2]}
           LOCALARRAY[$IDX2]=$TEMP
        fi
        IDX2=`expr $IDX2 + 1`
      done
    IDX=`expr $IDX + 1`
  done

 print "${LOCALARRAY[*]}"

}

while read LINE
do
 LINEPT1=${LINE%,*}
 set -A FIELDS $(echo $LINE | cut -d',' -f3 |cut -d'|'  --output-delimiter=' ' -f1-)
 LINEPT2=$(sort_array "${FIELDS[*]}"|cut -d' ' --output-delimiter='|' -f1-)
 print "${LINEPT1},${LINEPT2}"

done < test.dat

exit 0

$ cat ./test.dat
TEST1,ABC,5|4|1|3|2
TEST2,DEF,10|7|25|11|52|19
TEST3,XYZ,5|11|52|1

$ ./sort_fields.ksh
TEST1,ABC,1|2|3|4|5
TEST2,DEF,7|10|11|19|25|52
TEST3,XYZ,1|5|11|52

I still consider myself to definitely be a beginner with awk but your question intrigued me so I worked at it a bit. The following doesn't meet 100% of your requirement but I just can't figure it out from this point.

$ awk -F, '{split($3,a,"|"); n=asort(a,b); for (i=1; i<=n; i++) sort=sort "|" b[i]; print $1 "," $2 "," sort}' file

TEST1,ABC,5|4|1|3|2
TEST2,DEF,10|7|25|11|52|19
TEST3,XYZ,5|11|52|1

TEST1,ABC,|1|2|3|4|5
TEST2,DEF,|1|2|3|4|5|7|10|11|19|25|52
TEST3,XYZ,|1|2|3|4|5|7|10|11|19|25|52|1|5|11|52

I think I fix your code.

awk -F, '{sort=""} {split($3,a,"|"); n=asort(a,b); for (i=1; i<=n; i++) sort=sort "|" b[i]; print $1 "," $2 "," sort}' urfile
TEST1,ABC,|1|2|3|4|5
TEST2,DEF,|7|10|11|19|25|52
TEST3,XYZ,|1|5|11|52

$  awk -F, '{printf "\n"$1","$2","} {split($3,a,"|"); n=asort(a); for (i=1;i<=n;i++) printf "|"a[i]} ' urfile

TEST1,ABC,|1|2|3|4|5
TEST2,DEF,|7|10|11|19|25|52
TEST3,XYZ,|1|5|11|52

Should be a simple solution, but stop to merge the lines. Anyone can help to continue it?

$ awk -F[\,\|] '{for(i=3;i<=NF;i++) {print $1,$2,$i}}' urfile |sort -k1,1n -k3,3n
TEST1 ABC 1
TEST1 ABC 2
TEST1 ABC 3
TEST1 ABC 4
TEST1 ABC 5
TEST2 DEF 7
TEST2 DEF 10
TEST2 DEF 11
TEST2 DEF 19
TEST2 DEF 25
TEST2 DEF 52
TEST3 XYZ 1
TEST3 XYZ 5
TEST3 XYZ 11
TEST3 XYZ 52

sortbars() {
  echo "$1"|xargs -d'|' -n1|sort -n|xargs|tr ' ' '|'
}
while IFS=, read cola colb colc; do
  echo "$cola,$colb,$(sortbars $colc)"
done < infile

TEST1,ABC,1|2|3|4|5
TEST2,DEF,7|10|11|19|25|52
TEST3,XYZ,1|5|11|52

sortbars() {
  IFS='|'; for i in $1; do
    echo $i
  done|sort -n|xargs|tr ' ' '|'
}

perl:

while(<DATA>){
	chomp;
	my @tmp=split(",",$_);
	my @t1=split("[|]",$tmp[2]);
	$tmp[2]=join "|", sort {$a<=>$b} @t1;
	print join ",",@tmp;
	print "\n";
}
__DATA__
TEST1,ABC,5|4|1|3|2
TEST2,DEF,10|7|25|11|52|19
TEST3,XYZ,5|11|52|1