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Is it Possible to sort a list of hexadecimal numbers using "sort" command?

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Top Forums Shell Programming and Scripting Is it Possible to sort a list of hexadecimal numbers using "sort" command?
# 1  
Old 08-18-2011
MySQL Is it Possible to sort a list of hexadecimal numbers using "sort" command?
Hello Everybody Smilie !!!. i have question in mind, is it possible to sort a list of hexadecimal numbers using "sort" command?
# 2  
Old 08-18-2011
From the book "UNIX power tools By Shelley Powers, Jerry Peek"

There is no provision for sorting hexadecimal numbers
# 3  
Old 08-18-2011
In this way we can sort

Code:
$ cat hexanumbers.txt
3E80
3EF8
460
$ cat testfile.sh
#!/bin/ksh
for i in `cat hexanumbers.txt | awk '{ print "16#"$0}'`
do
typeset -i10 i
echo $i >> decimals_list.txt
done
for i in `cat decimals_list.txt | sort`
do
        echo "obase=16;$i" | bc
done
rm decimals_list.txt 
$ ksh testfile.sh
460
3E80
3EF8
$

This User Gave Thanks to jayan_jay For This Post:
guruprasadpr
# 4  
Old 08-19-2011
Hi.
Quote:
msort is a program for sorting files in sophisticated ways. It was originally developed for alphabetizing dictionaries of "exotic" languages in formats like those used by Shoebox and Toolbox, for which it has been extensively used, but is useful for many other purposes. msort differs from typical sort utilities in providing greater flexibility in parsing the input into records and identifying key fields and greater control over the sort order.
...

Msort stores numeric keys internally as double precision floating point numbers.
The conversion is done using the standard C library function strtod(3), which under-
stands both standard and scientific notation, decimal and hexadecimal. The special
values INFINITY and NAN are also supported. For details, see the documentation
for strtod(3). The interpretation of strings as numbers is governed by the locale
setting. Numbers containing delimiters such as commas can be sorted numerically
by using msort's exclusion facilities to remove the delimiters.

from the extensive pdf describing msort
The utility msort might be found in your repository, or, failing that, at MSORT

Best wishes ... cheers, drl
# 5  
Old 08-19-2011
based on jayan_jay's, here's a bash script :
Code:
$ cat hexanumbers.txt
3E80
3EF8
460
$ while read hexnum; do array[16#$hexnum]="$hexnum"; done < hexanumbers.txt 
$ printf '%s\n' "${array[@]}"
460
3E80
3EF8

# 6  
Old 08-19-2011
Code:
awk '{printf("%050s\t%s\n", toupper($0), $0)}' hex-data | LC_COLLATE=C sort -k1,1 | cut -f2

If you take a look at the C/POSIX collation sequence, you'll see that the sequences A-F and a-f both sort after 0-9 in the POSIX/C locale. So long as the hex numbers do not mix case and are of the same length, the string collation sequence is congruent to a hex digits sequence.

LC_COLLATE Category in the POSIX Locale

If you have a list of hex numbers, you can decorate them with a column of zero-padded, case-folded numbers, sort on that column, then output the original numbers.

Code:
$ cat hex-data
3e80
3EF8
460
$ awk '{printf("%050s\t%s\n", toupper($0), $0)}' hex-data | LC_COLLATE=C sort -k1,1 | cut -f2
460
3e80
3EF8

Regards,
Alister
# 7  
Old 08-19-2011
IMO, if the OP really have such numbers he should just normalize them. And there is no need to undecorate them back.
Code:
cat NUMS |  xargs printf "%4s\n" | tr 'a-z ' 'A-Z0' | sort

(It is "useful use" of cat).
Or with awk if there are several numbers on lines:
Code:
awk '{
  for ( i = 1; i <= NF; i++ ) {
    s = sprintf("%04s", $i)
    gsub(" ", "0", s)
    printf s " "
  }
  print ""
}' NUMS | tr a-z A-Z | sort

Use 2 or 8 for bytes and 32-bit words.
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