sorting problem

ltordsen · 11-02-2005, 01:11 PM

Hello.

I'm having a problem with the gnu sort. It boils down to this:

this sort will work fine:

(contents of file ignore_blanks)
a: a:1
a:b:2
b:a :1
b: b:10
b: b: 2

Note the spaces in lines.

When I use the commands

sort -b -t : ignore_blanks -k 1,1 -k 2,2 -k 3,3
and
sort -t : ignore_blanks -k 1,1 -bk 2,2 -bk 3,3

I get the same results (as I expect):
a: a:1
a:b:2
b:a :1
b: b:10
b: b: 2

But when I try a slight variation of files (i called this ignore_blanks2) and commands, things dont work as I expect:

(contents of ignore_blanks2)
a a 1
a b 2
b a 1
b b 10
b b 2

sort -k 1.1,1.1 -bk 1.3,1.4 -bk 1.6,1.7 ignore_blanks2
Result:
a a 1
a b 2
b b 2
b b 10
b a 1

Here, it does not ignore the leading white space in the specified fields. Anyone know a fix for this?

ltordsen · 11-02-2005, 01:19 PM

sorry...the spaces didn't come through in the html of the post...it should look like (using ':space:' to denote 1 whitepace character

a:space:a:space::space::space:1
a:space:b:space::space::space:2
b:space:a:space::space::space:1
b:space::space:b:space:10
b:space::space:b:space::space:2

It is sorting by ascii value (as I would like), but it is not removing the leading whitespace in the second example. What am I doing wrong?

paulsm4 · 11-02-2005, 03:25 PM

Apologies in advance that I'm not entirely clear what you're trying to do ...

... but, in general if you want to sort numbers, then you'll want to use "sort -n".

EXAMPLE:

Code:

Code:

sort list  # Wrong!
1
  10
  11
  2
  20
  3
30

sort -n list   # Better...
1
  2
  3
  10
  11
  20
30

sort -n list | awk '{printf "%3d\n", $1}' # Best
  1
  2
  3
 10
 11
 20
 30

'Hope that helps .. PSM