Bash: "sort" does not sort

Forum: Apps
Topic: Bash: "sort" does not sort
started by: seevee

Posted by seevee on Jan. 27 2009,21:29

If I enter the following code to sort a file with columns separated by colons,

Code Sample

sort -t: -k 4 file.file

the result is that the file is sorted by the third field. In fact, it does not seem to matter which field I identify after the -k option. It sorts every time by the third field.

In another file with fixed length columns, I tried the code

Code Sample

sort -k 4 file.file

and the result was the same regardless of which column I sorted by.

What am I doing wrong? What other information can I provide to help identify the problem?

Thank you in advance.

Posted by WDef on Jan. 27 2009,23:49

Works ok for me on this file:

Quote

a:b:i:j
1:h:c:z
n:2:3:4

Post an example of the data in your file.

Posted by seevee on Jan. 28 2009,13:37

The data is phone numbers, names, and dates. Example...

Quote

231:432:4550:Mooney:Albert:P:09-23-1945
231:432:5679:Ludlow:Q-Dog:G:10-15-2007

It works for me, too - in Ubuntu.

My version is DSL 4.2.4

Posted by WDef on Jan. 28 2009,16:58

I take it you have loaded gnuutils.dsl?

If

$ ls -l /usr/bin/sort

shows a link to Busybox, then you are using Busybox's sort, which has a greatly reduced option set.

Posted by seevee on Jan. 28 2009,18:06

Awesome help! Thank you.