Hello

I need to sort a file with data such as so it breaks on column 1 and all the data in column 2 is sorted into rows with a unique column 1:
1 5
1 6
1 7
2 3
2 4
3 7
3 0
3 9

So it comes out as:
1 5 6 7
2 3 4
3 7 0 9

I've tried many iterations of nawk but can't get it working!!!

Thanks in advance!

what have you tried so far?

awk '
{
   if ( arr[$1] == "" )
        arr[$1]=$1 " " $2
   else
        arr[$1]=arr[$1] " " $2
}
END{
   for( key in arr)
        print arr[key]
}
' file

and how does this accomplish what the OP wants?

here's one way of sorting by both rows [by $1] and columns within the rows:

nawk -f steve.awk steve.txt | sort -k 1n,1

steve.awk:

function isort(A,n,     i,j,t) {
    for (i = 2; i <= n; i++)
        for (j = i; j > 1 && A[j-1] > A[j]; j--) {
              # swap A[j-1] and A[j]
              t = A[j-1]; A[j-1] = A[j]; A[j] = t
        }
}

{
  arr[$1] = ($1 in arr) ? arr[$1] OFS $2 : $2
}

END {
  for ( i in arr ) {
    n=split(arr[i], tmpA, OFS)
    isort(tmpA, n)
    printf("%s%s", i, OFS )
    for(j=1; j <= n; j++)
       printf("%s%s", tmpA[j], (j==n) ? "\n" : OFS)
  }
}

Did you try running this code?
This code will give what the output he has given.
if he wants second column to be sorted
sort -kn1 -kn2 file | awk ' ...'

well..... even assuming fixing the 'sort' options - these syntax is illegal on Sun/Solaris....
Also assuming the OP's sample input file [steve.txt]...

$ sort -n -k 1,1 -k 2,2 steve.txt | nawk -f steve1.awk 
2 3 4
3 0 7 9
1 5 6 7