Hi,
I have a timetable list that I have sorted every way I can while playing with the sort utility. However, thrown into my list are a July 98 & a Dec 98. the rest of the dates vary across the months from Jan - Dec 99. My question is this:
Is there a way I can sort the list to display the 2 98 dates first then followed by the 99 dates, all in monthly order? the year & month are seperates fields. I seem to only be able to sort either the monthly field or the yearly field. is there a way I can sort the first 2 lines & then resort the remainder of the file ignoring the first 2 lines? Apologies for the daft question but if we don't ask then we don't learn!
Thanks
Scamps

Check the man page for sort... type 'man sort' at the prompt.

You need something like

sort -k5,6 -k1,3 ...

This sorts based on the year column first, then the month. I assume the month is only 3 characters in every line.

Joe

I read the manual before posting. I already tried -k but it's still not sorting the way I want it to. There's always either 1 or 2 of the lines that are not sorted in the correct order. I have 6 columns (fields) in the timetable (index, month, date, year, departure, destination). If I type: sort +3 -4 -n +1 -2 -bM then I get 2 lines incorrectly placed in the sort & the monthly sort starts at March instead of January. It doesn't make any sense to me why it's sorting in this way. If I type: sort -k 4,5 -n -k 2,3 -bM I get the same result.