bash script that counts string occurrence

tikit · 02-12-2009, 01:13 AM

Hi,

I have a file with names:

Code:

John
Mary
Bob
Mary
Mary
Bob

and I am searching for an efficient way how to summarize every name ocurrence like this:

Code:

Mary - 3
Bob - 2
John - 1

I tried this:
1. sorted the file
2. removed duplicate lines using uniq and saved to a temp file
3. went through this file and used

Code:

grep -c $LINE file_with_names

to make the sum

It works but It seams to complicated for me. Is there a simplier solution? An one line command would be fine.

theYinYeti · 02-12-2009, 02:26 AM

Code:

… | sort | uniq -c

Yves.

twantrd · 02-12-2009, 02:26 AM

Code:

[twantrd@twantrd tmp]$ cat names | sort | uniq -c
      2 Bob
      1 John
      3 Mary

-twantrd

jan61 · 02-12-2009, 11:09 AM

Moin,

Code:

sort names | uniq -c

no need for a cat.

Jan