UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hi all! I am new to Unix programming so bare with me please .

I have saved the output of my results in a file called testfile which contains 3 columns a 15 rows.

e.g.

Code:

 175 754 abvd  
 948 454 fewf 
  43 754 fewc
   6 734 feww
  xxx  xxx xxxx

I want to sort the contents of this file in descending order but when I use sort -nr it will only sort the first column while the second column will be sorted accordingly to the sorting of the first, which makes it a bit messy.

Any help will be much appreciated

Code:

sort -k1n,2 file

is this what you want?

Thanks for your quick reply!

It appears it does sort in ascending order correct for both 1 and 2 column but when I try to sort in descending order with

Code:

sort -k1nr,2 file

I still have the same problem

What about

Code:

sort -k1nr,2 -k2n,3 file

??

first colum in descending and secong column in asc

sort -k1,1nr -k2,2n filename

I still have the same problem. I want both 1st and 2nd column to be in descending order.
I have this

Code:

353 202
313 177 
336 188 
367 209 
341 195 
201 137 
345 188 
123 99 
153 117 
1245 390 
188 132 
145 112 
185 127 
162 129 
168 122

and after everything I've tried it sorts like this :

Code:

1245 390
367 209 
353 202 
345 188 
341 195  <-- error
336 188 
313 177 
201 137 
188 132 
185 127 
168 122 
162 129 
153 117 
145 112 
123 99

This is not an error, because sort works hierarchically. The second sort-field is only examined, if there are non unique values in the first field. 341 in the first field is less then 345 in the first field of the previous line and greater then 366 in the next line, so 195 ist not used for anything in the sort process.

Do you by any chance want to sort the two columns independently (that would break up records)?