I have this END section in an awk script:

Code:

END     {
                for (j in littlebin)
                        {
                        print (j, int(log(j)/log(2)) , littlebin[j])
                        lbsum+=littlebin[j]
                        }

                for (i in bins)
                        {
                        print (i / (1024^2) "MB" , bins[i])
                        }
        }

As you can see I have 2 for loops, each outputting the contents of an array, with a little extra calculation. So, it prints in this order:

(1) Contents of the littlebin array, then
(2) Contents of the bins array

Ok, good. But, I'd like the contents of each of those arrays to be sorted numerically on the first element printed. So, I add a sort pipe:

Code:

END     {
                for (j in littlebin)
                        print (j, int(log(j)/log(2)), littlebin[j]) | "sort -nk 1"
                        lbsum+=littlebin[j]

                for (i in bins)
                        print (i / (1024^2) "MB" , bins[i]) | "sort -nk 1"
        }

This causes the output to be somewhat reversed, to become:

(1) Contents of the bins array, numerically sorted, then
(2) Contents of the littlebin array, numerically sorted

Why is that happening? And what is the best way of sorting as I'm attempting, on the index of each array? I've tried asorti, but it doesn't sort numerically. Thank you.