Meaning of "b" modifier in "sort" command Post: 302493342

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Top Forums Shell Programming and Scripting Meaning of "b" modifier in "sort" command Post 302493342 by wjssj on Wednesday 2nd of February 2011 12:00:15 PM

02-02-2011

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Meaning of "b" modifier in "sort" command

I need to sort the following file by the rhdiskpower devices in the last column:

HTML Code:

Total_MB  Free_MB   OS_MB  Name           Failgroup      Library  Label  UDID  Product  Redund   Path
    1024      851    1024  OCRVOT1_0000   OCRVOT1_0000   System                         UNKNOWN  /dev/rhdiskpower1
    1024      853    1024  OCRVOT1_0002   OCRVOT1_0002   System                         UNKNOWN  /dev/rhdiskpower11
    1024      855    1024  OCRVOT1_0001   OCRVOT1_0001   System                         UNKNOWN  /dev/rhdiskpower10
    1024      884    1024  OCRVOT1_0003   OCRVOT1_0003   System                         UNKNOWN  /dev/rhdiskpower2
    1024      884    1024  OCRVOT1_0005   OCRVOT1_0005   System                         UNKNOWN  /dev/rhdiskpower9
    1024      885    1024  OCRVOT1_0004   OCRVOT1_0004   System                         UNKNOWN  /dev/rhdiskpower8
    8192     7563    8192  DBFCRED2_0000  DBFCRED2_0000  System                         UNKNOWN  /dev/rhdiskpower12
    8192     7564    8192  DBFCRED1_0000  DBFCRED1_0000  System                         UNKNOWN  /dev/rhdiskpower3
    8192     7568    8192  DBFCRED1_0001  DBFCRED1_0001  System                         UNKNOWN  /dev/rhdiskpower4
    8192     7569    8192  DBFCRED2_0001  DBFCRED2_0001  System                         UNKNOWN  /dev/rhdiskpower13
   65536    65441   65536  DBFCFLR1_0000  DBFCFLR1_0000  System                         UNKNOWN  /dev/rhdiskpower7
  409600   126488  409600  DBFCDAT1_0002  DBFCDAT1_0002  System                         UNKNOWN  /dev/rhdiskpower5
  409600   126492  409600  DBFCDAT1_0000  DBFCDAT1_0000  System                         UNKNOWN  /dev/rhdiskpower14
  409600   126504  409600  DBFCDAT1_0001  DBFCDAT1_0001  System                         UNKNOWN  /dev/rhdiskpower15

After spending more time than I care to admit, I finally was able to do it with the following sort command:

Code:

sort -k 8.17bn <name of file>

My question is this: The "b" was the critical piece to making this sort work. Without the "b", it sorted numerically by the first column. I've read the sort man pages, and it says that the "b" ignores leading blank characters. Any idea how that relates to what I was trying to do here?

Last edited by wjssj; 02-02-2011 at 01:15 PM..

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LEARN ABOUT ULTRIX

file

file(1) General Commands Manual file(1)

Name
file - determine file type

Syntax
file [ -c ] [ -f ffile] [ -m mfile] filename ...

Description
The command performs a series of tests on each filename argument in an attempt to classify it. If an argument appears to be ASCII, the
command examines the first 1024 bytes and tries to guess its language.

For character special files, part of this classification is information about which devices the system shows as active. In particular,
device-specific information such as controller type and unit, device type and unit, and status (offline, write locked, density, errors) is
returned. The general categories currently implemented are disk, tape, and terminal devices. The supported terminal devices include Local
Area Terminals (LAT) but not Local Area Network (LAN) pseudo-terminals.

The command uses the file to identify files that have some sort of magic number. A magic number is any numeric or string constant that
identifies the file containing the constant. Commentary at the beginning of explains its format.

Options
-c Checks the magic file for format errors by printing the internal representation of the magic file. No file typing is done under -c.

-f Interprets the following argument to be a file containing the names of the files to be examined.

-m Instructs file to use an alternate magic file.

Restrictions
It often does a poor job of distinguishing C programs, shell scripts, English text, and ASCII text.

It does not recognize many programming languages, including Modula, Pascal, and Lisp.

Files
/usr/lib/file/magic