Shell Programming and Scripting

I want to sort like below

Suppose few lines in a file is like this

systemid:ABC messagedestination:batchxpr replytoqname: myca
systemid:BCD messagedestination:realtime replytoqname: myca
systemid:ABC messagedestination:realtime replytoqname: eac
systemid: BCD messagedestination:mqonline replytoqname: myca

I want to first perform sorting according to value of systemid i.e. ABC,BCD,FGH

So it should be sorted first like this
systemid:ABC messagedestination:batchxpr replytoqname: myca
systemid:ABC messagedestination:realtime replytoqname: eac

systemid:BCD messagedestination:realtime replytoqname: myca
systemid: BCD messagedestination:realtime replytoqname: myca

so that same system ids are bundled together

Then after that i want to sort according to message destination.
so it shgould be like divided again
systemid:ABC messagedestination:batchxpr replytoqname: myca

systemid:ABC messagedestination:realtime replytoqname: eac

systemid:BCD messagedestination:realtime replytoqname: myca
systemid: BCD messagedestination:realtime replytoqname: myca

And finally according to reply to q name

So you get the picture, lines having same systemid,msgdestination and reply to q name shud be bundled together in the output

Can anyone help me in this???

Thanks in advance

Hi, try:

Code:

sort -t: -k2,2 infile
sort -t: -k3,3 infile
sort -t: -k4,4 infile