Shell Programming and Scripting

hi guys,

im fairly new to unix and bash scripts and therefore your help would really be appreciated.

i need to write a bash script that will take a csv file, and reorder the data and output to another csv file.

The source csv file will look something like this:
HEAD,671061,Add,SS 2011,1,??? NEW Hanger,IPL/CML/BDCM/BCA
LOT,671061,1,30/12/2010,31/01/2011,,
LINE,671061,43825012,2,30/12/2010,,
LINE,671061,43825174,1,30/12/2010,,
LINE,671061,43825256,1,30/12/2010,,
LINE,671061,43825262,1,30/12/2010,,
LOT,671061,2,20/01/2011,22/02/2011,,
LINE,671061,43825012,2,20/01/2011,,
LINE,671061,43825029,2,20/01/2011,,
LINE,671061,43825256,1,20/01/2011,,
LINE,671061,43825262,1,20/01/2011,,
LOT,671061,3,03/03/2011,04/04/2011,,
LINE,671061,43825012,2,03/03/2011,,
LINE,671061,43825262,1,28/04/2011,,
HEAD,671532,Add,4,MS-CWE-5 CUFF,,
LOT,671532,1,07/04/2011,09/05/2011,,
LINE,671532,76595017,1,07/04/2011
LINE,671532,76595052,2,07/04/2011
LINE,671532,76595069,1,07/04/2011

i need to then sort it by field 2, and then group by header type, and then sort all line items by date, to produce the following:

HEAD,671061,Add,SS 2011,1,??? NEW Hanger,IPL/CML/BDCM/BCA
LINE,671061,43825012,2,30/12/2010,,
LINE,671061,43825174,1,30/12/2010,,
LINE,671061,43825256,1,30/12/2010,,
LINE,671061,43825262,1,30/12/2010,,
LINE,671061,43825012,2,20/01/2011,,
LINE,671061,43825029,2,20/01/2011,,
LINE,671061,43825256,1,20/01/2011,,
LINE,671061,43825262,1,20/01/2011,,
LINE,671061,43825012,2,03/03/2011,,
LINE,671061,43825262,1,28/04/2011,,
LOT,671061,1,30/12/2010,31/01/2011,,
LOT,671061,2,20/01/2011,22/02/2011,,
LOT,671061,3,03/03/2011,04/04/2011,,
HEAD,671532,Add,4,MS-CWE-5 CUFF,,
LINE,671532,76595017,1,07/04/2011,,
LINE,671532,76595052,2,07/04/2011
LINE,671532,76595069,1,07/04/2011
LOT,671532,1,07/04/2011,09/05/2011
HEAD,671533,Add,4,MS-CWE-5 CUFF
LINE,671533,76595017,1,07/04/2011
LINE,671533,76595023,4,07/04/2011
LINE,671533,76595069,1,07/04/2011
LINE,671533,76595017,1,21/04/2011
LINE,671533,76595023,4,21/04/2011
LOT,671533,1,07/04/2011,09/05/2011
LOT,671533,2,21/04/2011,23/05/2011

Any help would be much appreciated

thanks

Try the sort command:

Code:

sort -t, -k2,2n -k1,1 file

@scrutinizer,

can you please explain the below sort command

sort -t, -k2,2n -k1,1 file

Using a comma as a separator (-t,) , numerically sort on the second column (-k2,2n) and then sort on the first column (-k1,1).