UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

I know this seems like a stupid question.
I am trying to sort an address book. Some peole have first, middle and last names, some only have first and last names.

Eg:
Bob Hope
John Bon Jovi
etc ..

I want to sort this by last name.
I was thinking of using something like sort -k $variable
So when the name is
bob hope variable=2
jon bon jovi variable=3
Thus sorting by the approriate field.

But as I suspected that doesn't work.
Any ideas ???

You can sort that list with this command:
awk '{print $NF,$0}' | sort | cut -d' ' -f 2- < inputfile

Thanks, although that didnt seem to work
I figured it out.

Thanks Anyway !

Opps.. this this...

awk '{printf $NF,$0}' <inputfile | sort | cut -d' ' -f 2-

I gotta learn to test this stuff before I post.

But also, your test data really needs a few more lines. Those three names are already sorted by last name. You need to have some lines out of order so that the sort program has something to do.

I had picked up on the "printf" typo you made (Im not that new) but to no avail. But I found a different way to do it.
Thanks Anyway,

I now know how to use awk (after reading up on the man page)

That's a creative solution..

It worked for me perfectly (both with print and with printf) when I tried it in ksh at work.. then I went home and tried again in ksh but needed to replace the 2- with 1- to make it work correctly. Also.. it hangs unless I move < inputfile from the end of the script to immediately after the awk command and before the pipe. What exactly didn't work for you?