Problem with sorting contents in a file

onesikgypo · 08-24-2009, 03:54 PM

Hi,

I'm having a bit of trouble thinking of an efficient way to sort a file. The file has contents such as this:

Code:

file1
file3
file5
file2
file4
file6
file7
file8
file11
file10
file9

using the sort command - i can sort most of it, however numbers "10" "11" etc. are being put on top, because they start with a 1 - so the resulting file is:

Code:

file1
file10
file11
file2
file3
file4
file5
file6
file7
file8
file9

is there some way around that?

catkin · 08-24-2009, 04:31 PM

Code:

cat input.yxt | sed 's/e/e /' | sort --key=2 -g | sed 's/e /e/'

pwc101 · 08-24-2009, 05:17 PM

No need to cat into sed; sed is perfectly capable of reading a file all on its own:

Code:

sed 's/e/e /' input.txt | sort --key=2 -g | sed 's/e /e/'

Kenhelm · 08-24-2009, 07:17 PM

There's no need to use sed

Code:

sort --key=1.5 -g input.txt

catkin · 08-25-2009, 07:19 AM

Thanks both

Nice bit of teamwork and made me chuckle how my "it works" solution was progressively refined to an elegant, minimal solution.