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Unix sort for fixed length columns and records

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# 1  
Old 11-05-2010
Unix sort for fixed length columns and records
I was trying to use the AIX 6.1 sort command to sort fixed-length data records, sorting by specific columns only. It took some time to figure out how to get it to work, so I wanted to share the solution. The sort man page wasn't much help, because it talks about field delimeters (default space and tab). The data I was sorting had fixed column formats, but I don't know if the input would have spaces in various places or not.

It looks like the Unix sort command actually handled this case gracefully if you only reference field 1 and use "dot" references to the column numbers you want.

The following sort worked me me, ignoring columns 1-5 and sorting on columns 6-8 only:

sort -k1.6,1.8 file
# 2  
Old 11-06-2010
That's good to share skill to other, but if you hope others to understand easily, to provide sample, and output is better way.
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