Re: Trying to get sort keys to work

[mario]

Philip -

Thanks for responding to this.  The larger challenge seems to be pulling the number out of the 
second field.  I had hoped that -k2.4n would pull as much, numerically, out of the string as 
possible, but I'm just not certain what it's doing; I suspect that it's just bailing since 
sometimes the field has a trailing "N".  BTW, how do I say "from character 4 through 
the end of the field"?  Is -k2.4,2 appropriate?

-- Mario

Philip Rowlands wrote:
> 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