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Full Discussion: Sort command question
Top Forums Shell Programming and Scripting Sort command question Post 302871233 by Don Cragun on Tuesday 5th of November 2013 05:29:28 PM
Old 11-05-2013
The sort utility key field specifiers -k 1,3 and -k 12,4 are specifying ranges of fields (not output print columns). To sort on the 1st three characters (still not print columns) on the line as the primary sort key and the 12th through the 15th characters of the 1st field as the secondary sort key the way to specify it would be:
Code:
sort -k1.1,1.3 -k1.12,1.15 input.txt >output.txt

which would save:
Code:
3302013020101NS        40
348201310013RVE         2
600201309013GFJ        70
600201310013GFJ        70

in output.txt for the given sample input. Note that when all given sort keys give two or more lines the same sort order (as in the last two lines here), the tie is broken by using the entire line as a final increasing order alphanumeric sort key.

PS Note also that sort works on text, not binary data. It sorts characters; not bytes. If the file you're sorting is ASCII it might not matter; but if your text contains UTF-8 multibyte characters; it makes a big difference.
Last edited by Don Cragun; 11-05-2013 at 06:33 PM.. Reason: Note byte != character.
This User Gave Thanks to Don Cragun For This Post:
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LEARN ABOUT DEBIAN

gpe-question

GPE-QUESTION(1) 						   gpe-question 						   GPE-QUESTION(1)

NAME

       gpe-question - GPE interface for asking questions from shell scripts.

SYNOPSIS

       gpe-question [---icon] name {--question "Question text"} {--buttons icon1:text1} [icon2:text2 ...]

DESCRIPTION

       This manual page was written for the Debian(TM) distribution because the original program does not have a manual page.

       gpe-question provides dialogues to raise a question within the GPE Palmtop Environment with cancel and ok buttons.

OPTIONS

       --question STRING
	  The question to ask the user via the dialogue.

       --buttons type:label
	  The type and label of the button(s) to be shown. Repeat for additional buttons.

EXAMPLES

       gpe-question "test" --question "Do you want to check first?"  --buttons YES:yes NO:no

AUTHOR

       This manual page was written by Neil Williams <codehelp@debian.org> for the Debian(TM) system (but may be used by others). Permission is
       granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU General Public License, Version 2 any later version
       published by the Free Software Foundation.

       On Debian systems, the complete text of the GNU General Public License can be found in /usr/share/common-licenses/GPL.

AUTHOR

       Moray Allen
	  Author.

COPYRIGHT

       Copyright (C) 2007 Neil Williams

Debian 1							 January 16, 2007						   GPE-QUESTION(1)
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