[NTLUG:Discuss] Linux sort

[Robert Citek]

On Mon, Apr 21, 2008 at 12:24 AM, Leroy Tennison
<leroy_tennison at prodigy.net> wrote:
> How do you sort a tab-delimited file using sort?  Created the following
>  test file (named test):
>
>  five    zzzzz   5
>  Four    vcxvbc  3
>  one     asdf    4
>  three   ghjks   1
>  Two     qwerty  2
>
>  (those are tabs separating the text, I checked with hexdump)

You can use the -A option to cat to display control characters:

$ echo -e 'a\tb' | cat -A
a^Ib$

>  I've tried
>
>  sort -t\t -k3,3 test
>  sort -t\t -k3n,3 test
>  sort -t '9' -k3,3 test
>  sort -t '\9' -k3,3 test (Produces a "multi-byte tab" error message)

In bash:

$ echo -e 'five\tzzzzz\t5
Four\tvcxvbc\t3
one\tasdf\t4
three\tghjks\t1
Two\tqwerty\t2' |
sort -t$'\t' -k 3,3n

Regards,
- Robert