Ignoring white space for a sort. 2

[btinder]

Hi all,

I've got a file that has lines likes this:

2 123456789

http://WWWWW

0501 A B

The primary key to sort on is the 123456789

http://WWWWW

and the secondary sort key is the 0501 (year/month).

My current sort command is this:
sort +1n -2 +2n -3 ${file}.stripped > ${file}.sorted

A problem exists though, when you encounter a record that has a space in the

http://WWWWW

part. It does the secondary sort incorrectly. Below is an example of what the sort does on 2 identical records but the date is different in both.

2 123456789

http://WWW XY

0501 A B
2 123456789

http://WWW XY

0401 A B

Note how the 0401 part should be above the 0501.

Can someone help? Thanks so much.

 

[LKBrwnDBA]

Field separator is SPACE, sort is behaving as it should.

Correct the records with incorrect keys.



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The person who says it can't be done should not interrupt the person doing it. -- Chinese proverb

 

[olded]

LKBrwnDBA is right. Is it possible to change your field separator to something other than SPACE?

Also, is your data fixed? Are you always sorting by columns 3-14 and 16-19?

 

[btinder]

Yes, the data is fixed. No, we can't modify the data, since it comes from an extract of a database.

 

[cptk]

IF the data is truely "fixed" (meaning for every record the same field starts at the same column), then what olded I assumming was leaning towards was the following:


sort -k 1.3,1.18 -k 1.19,22 .......

anotherwords, pick-off the starting and ending column positions for each field.

 

[olded]

That's exactly what I was leaning towards, but I think you have to use a character that's not being used for a field separator so the whole line is 'field 1':

sort -t~ -k 1.3,1.17 -k 1.19,1.22 d1.file

assumes the tilde, ~, isn't used in the data.

 

[cptk]

I disagree ...

You're treating the whole line as 1 field, thus you don't need to explicitly define a field separator (i.e. - space, tab, "," , etc.).

Defining one with the -t option in this case/example has no effect.

 

[btinder]

I think it worked! Thanks much for your help!