UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hi everyone,

This is my first post, but I have already received a lot of help from the forums in the past. Thanks!

I've searched the forums and my question is very similar to an earlier post entitled "Printing highest value from one column", which I am apparently not yet allowed to post a link to (only 4 more posts until I can spam!!).

My problem is that I have more columns, and want the whole line printed. For the example:

Line ID Sort Extra Extra2
1 A 3 4 3
2 A 1 2 1
3 A 2 3 2
4 A 1 1 1
5 B 1 1 1
6 B 1 2 1
7 B 3 3 3
8 C 1 1 1
9 D 3 1 3
10 E 3 1 3
11 E 3 2 3

I want to print one line for every unique ID value that has the highest value in Sort. Giving the output:

Line ID Sort Extra Extra2
1 A 3 4 3
7 B 3 3 3
8 C 1 1 1
9 D 3 1 3
11 E 3 2 3

If the sort value is equal for any given ID, I don't really care which is returned as in ID=E.

Franklin52's answer (modified for my data) in the previous post mentioned was close:

Code:

 awk 'a[$2] < $3{a[$2]=$3} END{for(i in a){print i, a[i]}}' file

However, I can't seem to get it to print the whole line. Please let me know what I am missing!

Thanks in advance!