I have a .txt file of pumpkinsizes that I'm trying to sort by size of pumpkin:
name |size
==========
Joe |5
Mary |10
Bill |2
Jill |1
Adam |20
Mar |5
Roe |10
Mir |3
Foo |9
Bar |12
Baz |0
Currently I'm having great difficulty in getting sort to work properly. Can anyone help me sort my list by pumpkin size without modifying the list structure?
The table headings need special consideration, since "sorting" them will move them to some random line. So we use a two step process:
a) output the table headings. b) sort the rest numerically (-n), reverse
order (-r), with field separator | (-t), starting at field 2 (-k)
$ awk 'NR<=2' in; awk 'NR>2' in | sort -t '|' -nr -k 2
name |size
==========
Adam |20
Bar |12
Roe |10
Mary |10
Foo |9
Mar |5
Joe |5
Mir |3
Bill |2
Jill |1
Baz |0
The key point is the option -k of sort. You can use man sort to see how it works. The solution for your problem follows:
sed -n '3,$p' YOUR_FILENAME| sort -hrt '|' -k 2
You can simply remove the
name |size
==========
by using sed command. Then whatever is left can be sorted using sort command.
sed '1,2d' txt | sort -t "|" -k 2 -n
Here, sed '1,2d' will remove the first 2 lines.
Then sort will tokenize the data on character '|' using option -t.
Since you want to sort based on size which happens to be second token, so the token "size" can be specified by -k 2 option of sort.
Finally, considering "size" as number, so this can be specified by option -n of sort.
You can do this in the shell:
{ read; echo "$REPLY"; read; echo "$REPLY"; sort -t'|' -k2n; } < pumpkins.txt
That reads and prints the first 2 header lines, then sorts the rest.
