Re: Trying to get sort keys to work

[Philip Rowlands]

On Fri, 26 Oct 2007, mario wrote:

> One of the biggest frustrations with the "sort" utility is figuring out how to 
> tell it where exactly the keys are on each line.  For example, I have a file 
> which contains, in part,
>
> MI#4617 ROM11  FAD_13 vss! vss! nmos  L=0.18U W=0.69U
> MI#4765 ROM0N  FAD_11 vss! vss! nmos  L=0.18U W=0.69U
> MI#4749 ROM8N  FAD_15 vss! vss! nmos  L=0.18U W=0.69U

I took the liberty of re-wrapping the lines where it seemed appropriate.

> I really want to sort FIRST on column 3, and then on the numeric part of 
> column 2.  I would think that the sort command would be something like
>
> sort -s -k3 -k2.4n

-k3 means "from key 3 until the end of the line". -k3,3 will restrict 
just to the single field.

> BUT this doesn't work.  It sorts OK on column 3, but then does nothing 
> with the second sort key.
>
> It would be incredibly useful if there were some mode in which sort 
> would just report each line and the sort keys found on that line, so 
> that I can make sure that I'm properly communicating how to find the 
> darn keys!

I agree, a debug mode for sort would be very useful.


Cheers,
Phil