Sorting multiple keys with Unix sort

Question

I have potentially large files that need to be sorted by 1-n keys. Some of these keys might be numeric and some of them might not be. This is a fixed-width columnar file so there are no delimiters.

Is there a good way to do this with Unix sort? With one key it is as simple as using '-n'. I have read the man page and searched Google briefly, but didn't find a good example. How would I go about accomplishing this?

Note: I have ruled out Perl because of the file size potential. It would be a last resort.

Answer 1

Use the -k option (or --key=POS1[,POS2]). It can appear multiple times and each key can have global options (such as n for numeric sort)

Answer 2

The -k option is what you want.

-k 1.4,1.5n -k 1.14,1.15n

Would use character positions 4-5 in the first field (it's all one field for fixed width) and sort numerically as the first key.

The second key would be characters 14-15 in the first field also.

(edit)

Example (all I have is DOS/cygwin handy):

dir | \cygwin\bin\sort.exe -k 1.4,1.5n -k 1.40,1.60r

for the data:

12/10/2008  01:10 PM         1,564,990 outfile.txt

Sorts the directory listing by month number (pos 4-5) numerically, and then by filename (pos 40-60) in reverse. Since there are no tabs, it's all field 1 to sort.

Answer 3

I believe in your case something like

sort -t@ -k1.1,1.4 -k1.5,1.7 ... <inputfile

will work better. @ is the field separator, make sure it is a character that appears nowhere. then your input is considered as consisting of one column.

Edit: apparently clintp already gave a similar answer, sorry. As he points out, the flags 'n' and 'r' can be added to every -k.... option.

Answer 4

Thanks everyone! I was missing the n after the POS2 with -k. I missed the 'POS is F[.C][OPTS], where F is the field number and C the character position in the field.' line.

Answer 5

This is a good one link about it (es castellano/español): sort con clave