sorting case 1

[ogniemi]

I have input with single filed in each line, like.

$ echo "aaa1\naaa2\nbbbbb0\naaa11\nbbbbb10\nbbbbb1\nbbbbb8\naaa9"
aaa1
aaa2
bbbbb0
aaa11
bbbbb10
bbbbb1
bbbbb8
aaa9

and can do "by number" sorting in that way:

$ echo "aaa1\naaa2\nbbbbb0\naaa11\nbbbbb10\nbbbbb1\nbbbbb8\naaa9"|sort -kn1.4 -kn1.6
bbbbb0
bbbbb1
bbbbb8
bbbbb10
aaa1
aaa2
aaa9
aaa11

Is there a universal command for any length of leading text + a number?

 

[SamBones]

Since the numeric part starts at a different location in different lines, I think you need a delimiter to do what you want. This works, but it feels like cheating. Maybe that's ok.

$ echo "aaa1\naaa2\nbbbbb0\naaa11\nbbbbb10\nbbbbb1\nbbbbb8\naaa9" | sed 's/^[a-z]*/& /' | sort -k2 -n | sed 's/ //'
bbbbb0
aaa1
bbbbb1
aaa2
bbbbb8
aaa9
bbbbb10
aaa11
$

Basically it adds a space to delimit the fields, sorts them, then removes the space.