New to Unix command line and have a question about the "sort" command


 
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Old 11-28-2011
New to Unix command line and have a question about the "sort" command

I am going through the Unix Made Easy second edition book by John Muster. So far it's been very informative and I can tell it may be a bit out of date.

In one of the exercises it talks about the "sort" command and using it to sort column's of data etc. The "sort" command has changed a bit and it looks like the options using +0 OR +1 to sort by columns 1 and 2 are no longer used. These are replaced with the -k option.

I understand I can sort the first column of data in a file by using a command like "sort -k1 filename".

My question is how can I add in secondary and third columns to sort by to refine the information more? This is would be useful where you have letters or numbers that are the same and you want to add more criteria from other columns to sort the data.

In the book it talks about this and uses commands like "sort +2 -3 +1 -2 filename". How does this use work using -k because I have been unable to sort the data with the secondary options.
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Old 11-28-2011
 
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