Hi,

I am facing a small problem while I am doing the sort.

Problem Definition:

I have a file which has the following data.
>cat test.dat
zxzxc
asdasd
qwaxcZa
qwaxcA


When I do a sort on this file.

the result set is

asdasd
qwaxcA
qwaxcZa
zxzxc

But, we need to sort by using the first 5 charaters only.

The desired output should be

asdasd
qwaxcZa
qwaxcA
zxzxc

Can we do the sort by using only the first five characters of the field.

Any help is highly appriciated.

thanks
Anand

Hi Anand,

Try this command
sort -k1.1,1.5 yourfilename

It means sort based on field 1 starting at first character to field 1 5th character.


Note: not tested

Thanks for the reply, but its not working.

Still it gives the following output only.

> sort -k1.1,1.5 test.dat
asdasd
qwaxcA
qwaxcZa
zxzxc

Try it with numeric option - possibly -g or -n (yea, I know it doesn't make sense)

Linux: sort -g -k1.1,1.5 yourfile
Solaris: sort -n -k1.1,1.5 yourfile

Try this :

cat -n test.dat | sort -k2,2.5 -k1,1n | cut -f2-