Hi All,

I have a small problem, hope you can help me out here.

I have a file that contains the same format of lines in 99% of the cases.
906516 XYZ.NNN V 0000 20070711164648 userID1 userID2 hostname 20070711164641

There are unfortunately several lines with these format:
906516 XYZ V 0000 20070711164647 userID1 userID2 hostname 20070711164641

The difference is in the 2nd coloumn. Sometimes its length is 3 , sometimes 7 digits long. Thus the number of delimiters between 2nd and 3rd column are also varied. Imagine the two lines as "V" in coloumn 3 would be in the same line...


My scenario is:
cut out the 1st(the number) and 5th (timestamp) coloumn and sort the result in reverse order using the timestamp column as key.

My command is:
cat filename |cut -f 1,15 -d " " |sort -r -k 2,2

Obviously this cannot work properly because sometimes the 5th column does not start at the 15th " " delimiter due the above mentioned reasons.

Could you guys let me know a solution I can carry out this scenario? I checked man for cut but could not find an option of using sophisticated delimiters, etc...

Thanks a lot!
BearCheese