Hey guys,

I am sort of new to unix and I am having difficulty sorting. What I am trying to do is sort a particular field in reversed order and another field in alphabetic order to create a new file that looks like this:

MILLER,EDWARD AL 14 101293 9341
MOORE,HENRY 15 101297 9077
NGUYEN,LE HUU 13 101314 9576

*NOTE THAT THE SPACINGS ARE NOT DISPLAYED CORRECTLY; IT SHOULD BE ALL LINED UP

here is what I tried:

sort -r +0.20 -0.24 +0.00 -0.16 "input file" > "output file"

Basically, "+0.20 -0.24" represents the first two digit numbers that needs to be reversed and "+0.00 -0.16" represents the names that needs to be in alphabetic order.

can someone help me?

why don't you use sort -k to specify the field and -t as field seperator
this is just an example..
This command sequence performs a numeric sort on the second field (+1 -2 -n). Within that ordering, it sorts the first field in reverse alphabetic order (+0 -1 -r)

just go through man page of sort..

How do I specify the field?

if you have any field seperator like ',' you can go for -t option
or else try this...

it sorted the two digit numbers in reversed order which is what I want but instead of sorting the names in alphabetic order, it reversed it as well.

then you should specify some field seperator..
paste some part of input file and color the part which you wanna sort...

I got it sorted!

What I did was give out this command:

sort-r +0.20 -0.24 -k 1,1d "input file" > "output file"

I could not specify the field for the two digit numbers because the names are not homogeneous. What I mean by that is that some of the names have 1 field and some of them have 2 fields:

You can see from above that the first and third name have 2 fields because of the middle name initials separated from the full names by a space. So, for those names, to get to the two digit numbers, you have to specify the 3rd field but for the name in the middle, you only have to specify up to the 2nd field.

So, what I did was count the spaces and use columns to specify the two digit numbers and reversed them. Next, I used the -k option to specify the 1st field for the names in alphabetic order using -d (sort in "phone directory" order). And it made my day! Took me so long to figure that one out and your replies really helped me understood how the whole thing works. Thanks for your help!