Shell Programming and Scripting

Switches:
  00     Make the record-separator an empty line. (In Awk, RS="".)
  n      Automatically read each record of the file, as Awk does.
  e      Program follows.

Program:
  split("\n)
         Short for $_.split("\n").  $_ is the record just read ($0 in Awk).
         The array created by split is then sorted by sort_by, which
         is a built-in implementation of the "Schwartzian Transform"
         that Perlers drool about.
{ |x| x[/\s\S+/].to_f }
         This is the code-block passed to sort_by. x is the parameter;
         an element of the array.
         x[ /\s\S+/ ]  This means "give me the part of the string x
         that is matched by the regular expression."   \s is whitespace;
         \S is non-whitespace.  This grabs the 2nd field.
         The matching substring is then converted to a floating-point
         number by  .to_f
         So sort_by sorts the array on the 2nd field, with each item
         treated as a float, not a string.
         puts  simply prints with appended linefeed; it cleverly prints
         each item of an array on a separate line.