UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hello,

I have a text file that I need to sort the lines by date

record=5,French 9,2008-09-02T08:55:00,2008-09-02T10:00:00,2
record=79,Entrepreneurship 30,2008-09-17T11:00:00,2008-09-17T12:00:00,2
record=6,Computer Science 20,2008-09-02T09:55:00,2008-09-02T10:50:00,1
record=7,Entrepreneurship 30,2008-09-02T11:00:00,2008-09-02T12:00:00,2


Essentially I need to sort these lines by the start date & time which is bolded here. Is it possible to sort these lines by the date highlighted?

Thank you for your help
Dallas

Try this:

Code:

awk -F, '{t=$3;gsub("[-T:]*","",t);print t,$0}' inputfile | sort -n -k 1,1 | cut -d " " -f 2- > outputfile

Essentially it creates a temporary field containing the date stamp minus all punctuation, sorts it by that field numerically, and removes that field again.

I have to be honest with you. I have absolutely no idea how this works but it works very well. Thank you so much for your help.

Thank you Annihilannic
Dallas

Hello,

Based in this same text format is there a way to extract all lines between two dates.

record=5,French 9,2008-09-05T08:55:00,2008-09-02T10:00:00,2
record=79,Entrepreneurship 30,2008-09-04T11:00:00,2008-09-17T12:00:00,2
record=6,Computer Science 20,2008-09-03T09:55:00,2008-09-02T10:50:00,1
record=7,Entrepreneurship 30,2008-09-02T11:00:00,2008-09-02T12:00:00,2

Essentially can I pull say the all items between September 3 at midnight and september 4th at midnight.

Thank you
Dallas

Try this:

Code:

awk -F, '{t=$3;gsub("[-T:]*","",t); if (t >= 20080903000000 && t < 20080904000000) print t,$0}' inputfile | sort -n -k 1,1 | cut -d " " -f 2- > outputfile

I'll take the opportunity to explain how it works:

awk -F, - run awk, setting the default input field separator to a comma.

The next part between the single quotes is the awk script:
{t=$3; - assign the third field to variable "t"
gsub("[-T:]*","",t); - substitute any occurrences of dash, capital T or a colon in the variable "t" with nothing
if (t >= 20080903000000 && t< 20080904000000) print t,$0} - print t followed by the original input line only if the timestamp is in the specified range

inputfile - the input data

| sort -n -k 1,1 - sort numerically by the first field

| cut -d " " -f 2 - remove the temporary first field which we used for sorting

> outputfile - and store the output in "outputfile"

Thanks again, I really appreciate your help. I have been working on a custom scheduling software for an in house project at my work and your help with processing this data has really sped up my progress. Thank you
Dallas