oam/knowledge base/sort.md

Sort

Table of contents

1. TL;DR
2. Sort by the value in the last field
3. Sources

TL;DR

# Sort given lines.
sort 'path/to/file'

# Sort lines in reverse.
sort -r 'path/to/file'

# Sort lines numerically.
sort -n 'path/to/file'

# Sort lines and remove duplicates.
sort -u 'path/to/file'

# Sort lines in random order.
sort -R 'path/to/file'

# Sort lines numerically according to the value in the 3rd column.
sort -t $'\t' -k 3n,3 'path/to/file'

# Sort by the value in the last field.
awk 'BEGIN {FS=","; OFS="|"} {print $NF,$0}' file.txt \
| sort -n -t '|' | awk -F '|' '{print $NF}'

Sort by the value in the last field

1. copy the last field (column) of each line at the beginning of each of the lines with a different delimiter:

   awk 'BEGIN {FS=","; OFS="|"} {print $NF,$0}' file.txt
   

2. sort on the 1st field specifing the delimiter to be the character above:

   awk 'BEGIN {FS=","; OFS="|"} {print $NF,$0}' file.txt | sort -n -t '|'
   

3. discard the first field

   awk 'BEGIN {FS=","; OFS="|"} {print $NF,$0}' file.txt | sort -n -t '|' | awk -F '|' '{print $NF}'
   awk 'BEGIN {FS=","; OFS="|"} {print $NF,$0}' file.txt | sort -n -t '|' | awk -F '|' '{print $2}'
   awk 'BEGIN {FS=","; OFS="|"} {print $NF,$0}' file.txt | sort -n -t '|' | cut -d '|' -f 2
   

Sources

• Sort a file in Unix based on the last field
• The essential Bash cheat sheet