UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

I would like to sort a large ascii file. Primary sort on the 1st column, and secondary sort on the second column. The file consists of 10 rows of header text and then thousands of rows with 6 columns. I want to sort all of the rows by the first column and second column. As an example, here is example.asc:

Header text
256 5000 4008
300 5000 4008
256 5006 4008

I would also like to know the minimum and maximum number for columns 1 and 2. Help is much appreciated!

I expanded the sample you provided to make the output more obvious.

Code:

> cat file13
Header text
256 5000 4018 
300 5009 4008 
256 5006 4008 
200 6000 3000
128 5008 4009

> tail +2 file13 | sort -k1,2
128 5008 4009
200 6000 3000
256 5000 4018 
256 5006 4008 
300 5009 4008

The tail +2 skips to the 2nd line of input; for you, perhpas try +11
The sort -k1,2 sorts on the first field then the second

To get the high and low values:

Code:

> tail +2 file13 | cut -d" " -f1 | sort | head -1
128
> tail +2 file13 | cut -d" " -f1 | sort | tail -1
300
> tail +2 file13 | cut -d" " -f2 | sort | head -1
5000
> tail +2 file13 | cut -d" " -f2 | sort | tail -1
6000

Thanks!