Hi all

My text file looks like this:

Code:

start doc
...                    (certain number of records)
REC3|Emma|info|
REC3|Lukas|info|
REC3|Arthur|info|
...                     (certain number of records)
end doc
start doc
...                     (certain number of records)
REC3|Tamira|info|
REC3|Henry|info|
...     
end doc

As you see, the text file contains different document sections, and some of the records in there are tagged with "REC3" which is a unique record code. REC3 lines are always in a row, but obviously there are as many REC3 sections as there are documents.

What I want to do is to sort these REC3 lines per document using the quickest UNIX command possible. The expected output file is:

Code:

start doc
...                    (certain number of records)
REC3|Arthur|info|
REC3|Emma|info|
REC3|Lukas|info|
...                     (certain number of records)
end doc
start doc
...                     (certain number of records)
REC3|Henry|info|
REC3|Tamira|info|
...     
end doc

I don't want to touch any of the other record types. Does any of you have any suggestion about how to do this? I would be very grateful. I had in mind perl had some good potential to make it simple, but I´m no expert. I tried a couple of things with ksh/awk but it tended to become complex and unflexible.