Issues calling sort from perl using pipe as delimiter

amytys · 10-20-2004, 11:38 AM

I'm trying sort a file by calling the sort program from w/in Perl.

The issue is that I want to sort on given columns, and my delimiter is the pipe. I can't get the pipe to take.

I've tried:

system("sort -t\| -2 +3 $OUTPUT_DIR/file.txt > OUTPUT_DIR/file.srt");

and

system('sort -t\| -2 +3 $OUTPUT_DIR/file.txt > OUTPUT_DIR/file.srt');

Neither seems to work. I've done this in the past with underscores as delimiters, but not w/pipe... worked fine! I really want to avoid doing a hack, changing the given pipe to a more suitable character before I call the sort. I know this can be done, I'm just lost in the syntax. Perhaps something from the perlop would help?

Chrax · 10-20-2004, 09:35 PM

Quote:

system("sort -t\| -2 +3 $OUTPUT_DIR/file.txt > OUTPUT_DIR/file.srt");

Shouldn't this be

Code:

system("sort -t\| -2 +3 $OUTPUT_DIR/file.txt > $OUTPUT_DIR/file.srt");

Other than that, I don't see any reason it shouldn't work, unless it's trying to extend your variables beyond their bounds. For example, one time I needed to use ...$var_300... and it assumed my variable wasn't $var but $var_300.

If this happens, this is sort of a hack to get around that.

Code:

$tosystem = "sort -t\| -2 +3 " + $OUTPUT_DIR + "/file.txt > " + $OUTPUT_DIR + "/file.srt";
system("$tosystem");