Linux sort by column numeric So the long explanation of what is going on: with awk, print the last field first then the whole record, sort in reverse numerically, then trim off the first column using cut. Related. 3889 7. Then enter!sort -k 3n or use the below code to tell Vim to skip the first two words in every line and sort on whatever follows: Sort will work sorting data on csv & txt file , it will print the output on console-t says columns are delimited by '|' , -k1 -k2 says that-- it will sort te data by column 1 & then by 2 $ sort -t '|' -k1 -k2 <INPUT_FILE> For storing the result in output file use following command $ sort -t '|' -k1 -k2 <INPUT_FILE> -o <OUTPUTFILE> To sort alphabetically by the fruit name in the 1st column: sort -k1 fruits. Hot Network Questions @StéphaneChazelas are you asking why I stopped the sort on field 2, or something more general? The first delimiter is a tab from awk's printf, so sort can see the numeric year field I've added as well as the next field, but the cut can easily chop off that first temporary field. 3800 chr30 89. The ls command would enable human readable sizes with -h, and long list output format with -l. First, let's I want to sort the 7th field in reverse numerial order (smallest values first). 4 (2014-04-04 18:50:39 CEST) multi-call binary. 11%. How can I sort by first column textually and then by the second numerically with 'sort'? 13. -r The standard way to perform an increasing numeric sort on the 2nd field in a comma separated file would be: sort -t, -k2,2n file And the -g option is an extension not mentioned by the standards. This comprehensive tutorial will guide you through various techniques and commands to efficiently sort and organize data columns in Linux, helping you streamline your data processing workflows and improve productivity. 7 I've tried sort -k 13 F. Using sort -k1 data is the same as sort data and means sort by column 1, then by column 2, then by column 3, You can also use sort -k1. Excel Sort Numeric Column By Number. 11% and outputs 9 1 something 11. gz log2. If you want numeric sort then you need to tell this to sort:. iruvar iruvar. sort -g file1 > file 2 -g, --general-numeric-sort The -n option specifies numerical sorting (as opposed to lexicographical sorting). I can't think of a case where using -t without also using -k makes any sense. For example: $ cat ages. 0014 0. It does sort; the sequence in the output is different than in the input. For example, yielding 1 2 10 rather than 1 10 2 (lexicographic order). tripleee. The -k Learn efficient numeric sorting techniques in Linux using powerful command-line tools, exploring sorting methods, options, and practical examples for data manipulation. Learn; ## Sort CSV file by third numeric column cat data. This is a requirement because uniq only matches on repeated lines, ie . 4n -k2V abcss | uniq explanation: k1M: does a month sort on the 1st column. sort --field-separator=$'\t' --key=1,1 --key=2,2n t. 2213 chr28 85. To sort on the most expensive cheese the To sort on the fourth column use just the -k 4,4 selector. Sort data in descending order of first column, for equal values, use second column in ascending order Numeric sort by the column values. If you only want to sort only on the 5th field then use -k5,5. ls -nl | sort -k 8,8n -k 6,6M This worked on Linux; column 8 is "n" (numeric), column 6 is "M", month. I suggest to edit the question to focus on "sort by a manually defined order" (this order can come from ls, but doesn't have to). So for sort -k1,1 -k2,2 and sort -k1,2 to produce different results, you need an input that contains characters that sort before the separator. 1-2001, ‘sort’ supports a traditional origin-zero syntax ‘+POS1 [-POS2]’ for specifying sort keys. csv ; tail -n +2 file. In conjunction with the -k option, you’ll also need to know about other options like -n or -r to efficiently sort by column. com. My command is below, but it outputs the original file without the first two rows, but also without sorting by the second column. All you need to do is pass the column number along with the -k flag. A string comparison of numeric values will get the numbers ordered like 1,10,2,20. (And besides, it's not a problem in the same way The challenge with this sort is that the sorting fields are defined by both '. Use sort's -k option to sort by (multiple) columns at once: $ sort -k1,1 -k2n input A 1-2 A 3-4 A 6-8 B 5-9 B 7-10 -k1,1 sorts by the first column first, then -k2n by the second¹ numerically when the first column was tied, so you get your output in the order you want: sorting by the first element of the second column, only if the first column element is the same. index 1 points to the (first) blank preceding the field, not the field's actual first char. 1. Sorting . -k3 to check the 3rd column. is there a way to sort negative numbers with sort in bash ? Use sort -g (--general-numeric-sort), not sort -n (--numeric-sort). 12,8. : -k 3. 9112 4. 3631759258 6 72. By default, it sorts on the entire contents of that line, but -k can be used to sort on one or more fields within those lines. By default, it sorts the entire line alphabetically. 1 40 50 word01. 2762 chr27 96. Whether it is safe to use : is debatable; it depends whether your data This question now answered - scroll to the end of this post for the solution. Windows CLI: sort text file by column. anthony@mtt3:~$ sort --help | egrep "\-g" -g, --general-numeric-sort compare according to general numerical value The following one liner iterates over a file with the names of the PDF files and grabs the numbers only with egrep -o and uses sort -g to sort the numbers in ascending order. There is a specific command for sorting the /etc/passwd file by UID: # pwck -s Just to be safe, you should use this instead of generic sort if you're sorting the actual, active /etc/passwd file for your system, as pwck will handle the necessary file locking correctly. Now, you might find it easier to use perl which: supports those +1. Hi all, how can i sort an alpha numeric column (example below) with numbers sorted first and alphabets later on. So in your example 100 sorts after 10 but before 50 because 1 always sorts before 5. 6. 11, the version number is sort (GNU coreutils) 5. sort -s -n -k1,1 A basic query. 6335. -depth -type f -iregex "\(. 14n There are 12 columns and I need to sort first by column 2, then 11, and lastly 3. a stable sort is performed). The GNU sort (as available on Linux,) has a "version sort" mode that interprets numberes inside non-numbers just the way you ask for:. Sorting the CSV File by the Nth By this I mean that all rows that agree at column 9 should be sorted by column 14, and among these, those that also agree on column 14 should be sorted by column 16. I will use the numbers file here: At first, open the Ubuntu Terminal. On Linux (or, more accurately, with GNU sort), there's an option -g or --general-numeric-sort. Introduction. example: #Input file more test. csv | sort -t',' -k3 -n The last paragraph most certainly means that, the values for all specified keys considered equal, sort(1) uses simple string comparison on the lines and observes only --reverse (or -r) if it is specified. unix sort for 2 fields numeric order. txt apple 15 banana 5 cherry 10. 5. Sort -t expects a single character to separate fields. 2 30 50 word01. Follow edited Oct 22, 2014 at 10:28. json | sort -n Now, if you want to sort the file on the 16 th column, beware sort supports only one character column delimiter, so you'd need to preprocess the Learn how to use the sort command to re-order text data by specific columns in Linux bash. The n trailing is for numeric sort. txt Bob 12 Jane 48 Mark 3 Tashi 54 $ sort -k2 -n ages. Because "1" comes before "2" and "4" lexicographically. 3rn which just says sort using the 4th field character 1 through character 3 by the same reverse numeric, e. sorting 2nd column and then 3rd column using sort with negative values. Try this: sort -k5,5 -r -n -t \t filename or if the above doesn't work (with the tab) this: sort -k5,5 -r -n -t $'\t' filename The man page for sort states: But if one column is numeric you can use<=> instead of leg to sort numerically (<=> is commonly termed 'spaceship' operator). Let's try a Schwartzian transform: awk '{print length($2), $0}' file | sort -k2,2nr -k1,1nr -k3,3 | cut -d" " -f2- The awk command takes 1 something 11. 10 is the same as 1. I also want to save the sorted columns to a new document. 1 5 8 word01. 3620 chr26 72. The -k option, in particular, is used to sort on a certain column. Linux sort by column and in reverse order. You then have to move that line after sorting the file. Piping the output into sort organises the output into alphabetical/numerical order. 11278069581e-06 I have tried to use the UNIX sort tool like this: $ sort -t"," -n -k -r 7 <my_file> The problem I am having is that sort does not recognize exponential form. txt according to the eighth column: sort -k8 -rn Note that you need to specify the start and end fields for sorting (2 and 2 in this case), and if you need numeric sorting, add n. $ sort -k3nr file. 1830 chr4 117. csv | sort -t, -nk6 - first it will sort by column 3, then will sort that by column 6 so column 6 is sorted correctly all the way and for any rows where column 6 is the same, those will be sorted by column 3. Note that this has the very specific advantage of being able to selectively sort parts of a piped input. ls -lhf **/*(. Also, you may need to prefix the command with LC_ALL=C, to avoid any side effect This is true for both alphabetical and numeric values, as shown below: sort -r -k1,1 contacts sort -r -k3,4 contacts. 6231 5. Learn efficient Linux sorting techniques to organize and manipulate data columns using powerful command-line tools, perfect for system administrators and data processing tasks. negative sign is used to invert the sort order (descending instead of ascending). 498469643137 1 6. Then it feeds these numbers to sed and If you've got a text file with data arranged in separate columns, you can sort the file according to the content of a column. csv | sort -t , -k1n (I'm piping head/tail command to skip the first line of the file, as it's a header and contains string) However, it doesn't return a One of the useful options of the sort command is the -k, which allows users to specify which columns to sort by. – To sort a text file in ascending order, you simply need to open the terminal and type the following command: Related: Mastering The Free Command In Linux: A Comprehensive Guide sort [filename] Replace [filename] with the name of the text file you want to sort. ps has an inbuilt option that sorts its output, based on any field of choice. End code: find . 1. 4) and then sort numerically (-n). In English language locales, , is the thousand separator, which sort ignores in the integer part of numbers. txt Share. 2 40 50 What I would like as results is I Tried sort -t $\t -k1,1 2,2 <filename> but doesn't work. Awk sort by last column and the print the whole line. 98112003175e-10 9. – When I try to add -g to the sort, the sorted file has more problems and column 1 is no longer sorted. As Aia said, if you don't show us a sample of the data you're trying to sort and the sorted output you're hoping to get from that sample, it is hard for us to guess at why sort -n The sort command compares all lines from the given files and sorts them in the specified order based on the sort keys. sort -k2. From man 1 sort:-V, --version-sort natural sort of (version) numbers within text (Creating empty test files to list: touch log1. The sort command in Linux is capable of sorting numerically. *\%3v/ Alternatively select the lines you wish to sort using the Shift+V command. There's a huge difference! A real numeric column would apply numeric sorting, while your column uses alphanumeric sorting. jstack -l 5213 | grep cpu | sort -t '=' -g -k4,4 with -g for "general numeric" sort. 7354 4. ). First it will sort 3rd column and then 4th column. n for numeric sorting, r for reverse order and k 2,2 for the second column. Follow answered Nov 13, 2013 at 15:03. How can i reorder a file by How to Sort Lines in Reverse Order in Linux File Using sort Command. 8n file -n (numeric sort) compare according to string numerical value -k2 means sort on the 2nd field (and to the end of the line), you could just restrict it to the second field with -k2,2 You didn't ask about this, and I didn't use it above, but it may come in handy some day. csv Example Use/Output -k1 sorts by column 1. See examples of alphabetical, numerical, reverse, and multi-level sorting with In Linux, the sort command, which employs the merge sort algorithm, is used for this purpose. 4e-22 9. txt“, which means that the original file remains unchanged, and the sorted content is stored in a separate file. If you want to store the output in another file, @Scott: yes you did use a platform-specific quirk, namely the fact that dir groups consecutive numbers into an "effective character" whereas ls doesn't. txt” in alphabetical order and then redirects the sorted output to a new file named “sorted. Quoting from POSIX sort:-k keydef. 5570 chr29 126. GNU sort stable sort when sort does not know sort order. If you don't need any special formatting, you can just pass the number. XX), you can use sort with the field separator being a ',' and then your KEYDEF would be -k4. The -*. I have a file with 2 columns, "Name" and "Age", looking like this: Alex, 15 Mary, 12 Alex, 28 Zoe, 16 Alex, 17 I will sort by the first column in alphabetical order, using sort -t ',' -k1,1 filename. 17. k2V: does a version sort on the second column to get timestamp right. Keep in mind the details from the info sort page: '-g' '--general-numeric-sort' '--sort=general-numeric' Sort numerically, converting a prefix of each line to a long double-precision floating point number. 5663 If you have GNU sort sort then you can do a version sort: $ sort -V file a 2 a 10 b 1 Option:-V, --version-sort natural sort of (version) numbers within text The nice thing about version sorting is it will work regardless of columns: $ cat file a2 b1 a10 $ sort -V file a2 a10 b1 But it doesn't sort. txt” as shown below. 4062 chr2 111. Sort -g is used to sort numbers in ascending order. 9384741047 Why not use a numeric sort? Any non-numeric keys will evaluate to zero, so you don't need to clip off the '# header' line. 5 0. I added some arbitrary numbers as a third column and will display the output sorted by each column. by using the global option -n: sort -n -t':' -k2; or by including n in the Where each column is sorted numerically from biggest to smallest. txt sort: multi-character tab `\\t' $ sort -t "`/bin/echo '\t'`" -k3,3nr file. gz log101. Without the headers, the cutting and sorting is easily accomplished via the -k option to sort along with cut or awk to view a subset of the columns. txt, but it doesn't seem to work:. @Kaz: sort's key specs. csv file to only keep those including 'Government expenditure on education, total (% of GDP)', then to only keep columns 1 and 64, and finally to sort based on column 64 which is numeric. txt Get a virtual cloud desktop with the Linux distro that you want in less than five minutes with Shells! With over 10 pre-installed distros to choose from, the worry-free installation life is here There are a total of 3 fields. a b a If you use uniq on this text file, it will return the following:. Otherwise strange things might happen if someone attempted to log in or even query some The output you show is sorted alphabetically instead of numerically. With the GNU implementation of sort, you can add the -s option to disable that last-resort comparison. To sort in reverse order, you can use the ‘-r’ option: Example: If we want to sort lines in reverse order in Linux file we can use sort command with -r option, suppose we have a file name “example. Also, use the -t command line switch to specify the delimiter to tab. (numeric, keyfield 2, reverse order), while the awk only prints the first of each key by using the "doesExist" associative array ex[] to :%!sort It will sort according the whole line alphabetically. Just for you case the man sort. $ tail -n+2 sample. 1,1. txt: 10 5 200 42 7. I have such a class defined below. I have tried sort -k2n,1 file1 but while this sorts the columns in the correct order, it does not sort column 2 numerically. 19. Examples of alphabetical sorting, reverse order sorting, sorting by number and mixed case sorting. sorted list where list is the unsorted list, and list. Follow edited Oct 26, 2012 at 14:11. 27. In the world of Linux system administration and data management, sorting data by specific columns is a crucial skill. 93. *Note Floating point::. Stack Overflow for Teams Where developers & technologists share private knowledge with coworkers; Advertising & Talent Reach devs & technologists worldwide about your product, service or employer brand; OverflowAI GenAI features for Teams; OverflowAPI Train & fine-tune LLMs; Labs The future of collective knowledge sharing; About the company Visit the blog You can't sort by length with sort. I am using the unix sort command to sort by the relevant column, but it appears to be trying to sort alphabetically instead of numercially. I could have separated on a space, or even a colon, but then I'd have needed to specify -k1,1, -k2,2, and -k3,3 specify to sort by first, second, and third column (exactly: from 1 to 1 first, from 2 to 2 second, and from 3 to 3 third). 7e-22 0. As opposed to -n, this option handles general floating points. e. gz log3. However, the first two rows of the file are the titles, and I would like to omit them. I've not played with it. gnu sort alphanumerically by one column, followed by numerically in next column? 1. – Jonathan Leffler. We use the sort command in Linux to organize text files based on specified criteria. Not to mention, it needs additional options to ls and sort to use exact timestamps, but not everyone will need this. See more details in the manual. txt The output is not in reverse order, so it seems -r is being ignored. It is the same n you have in the question above, but by placing it at the end of a key specification, it makes the sorting for that key numeric, rather than global sort. This replaces the "," sequence with Control-A (shown as ^A in the code), then uses that as the field delimiter in sort (the numeric sort on column 2), Linux sort -Help Wanted. 3. gnu/unix sort numerical only using first column? 2. are truly byzantine - the short of it is: the blank(s) preceding the field are considered part of the field, so char. 42. Your second command, which is equivalent to: I have some output from a curl command that is giving me several columns of data. The difference between using -F with a space in awk, and using -t with a space in sort is as follows:. 8,1. TL;DR. B 11 B 3 D 7 C 5 C 2 A 2 A 0. A single digit specifies the column. and _ to sort the same and a forward (non-reverse) sort on everything after that. In the second example above, the n is added as a specifier/modifier to the 7th column If you have a table in your file, you can use the -k option to specify which column to sort. Then earlier pre-pended column would be removed. gz log99. Sort column by first two letters. You need to sort the 2nd and 3rd columns using the -k option of the sort command as follows: $ sort -k 2,2n -k 3 data. For example, the option -k 2 made the program sort using the second column of data. You can't specify several/different field separators for the same sort command. To sort a file named output. 4n: does an numeric sort to get the columns in order . Similarly for sorting by the last field when there is a variable number of fields, although there you can just reverse the field order, sort it, then reverse it back again. Probably not material for numeric sorting since sort would end the key when it encounters the first non-numeric character (| in this case) but worth adopting as a best practice Sorting within a file by columns Linux. Note that on any specific system, including Note that -k3 is not sort by the 3rd column, it's sort by the section of line that starts with the 3rd column, with the default field delimiter being the transition from a non-blank to a blank. Here is an example: There is some differences between sort among Linux/UNIXes On OSX I have the possibility of simultaneously and in a stable way to sort under 2 columns (max) at the same time: but the specification of one column for sort so is impossible a stable sorting under 2 columns criteria. The -k 1 doesn't actually mean "this field and all of the following" in the context of numeric sort, as you can see if you try to sort on the second column. 58 10 8. sorting rows of a data file with If the values are numeric, then you probably want consider using the -n option which will "compare according to string numerical value" or the -g option which will "compare according to general numerical value". Update. I tried the following commands but it wasn't sorted as we expected. For GNU sort: sort -k2M -k3n -k4-k2M sorts by second column by month (this way "March" comes before "April")-k3n sorts by third column in numeric mode (so that " 9" comes before "10")-k4 sorts by the fourth column. -k key/column-g general numeric sort; Share. The command below, assume that all the names provided in column #1 are first/last and there are no middle names. 7083918219 4 79. You can try it by doing the steps below. Hot sort -k1,1 -k4,4n -n : Makes the program sort according to numerical value-k opts: Sort data / fields using the given column number. To verify the content, use the cat command. You need -b, as sort counts columns from the end of the previous field (man page: sort --debug -k5. 3600 IN A 10. txt # apparently this sort by space as delimiter $ sort -t"\t" -k3nr file. sort -t $'\t' -k 4,4 <filename> You might also want -V which sorts numbers more naturally. 189k strange behavior with linux sort. 2. 8nb sort: using simple byte comparison sort: key 1 is numeric and spans multiple fields esx01. If neither -t nor -b is in effect, characters in a field are counted from the beginning of the preceding whitespace. 2bn,3 (note that the global-b option does not work in this case). 3gb" etc). -n to make it numeric sort. Linux sort last column. Viewed 729 times Specify the sort keys separately with the criteria: sort -k1,1nr -k2,2 inputfile This specifies that the first key is sorted numerically in reverse order while the second is sorted as per the default sort order. I have a file F. 123 numbers out of the box; only considers . When you have multi-digit numbers, sort -n considers the entire number; by default the file 3 2 1 20 30 sorts like this: 1 2 20 3 30 which is probably not what you wanted. The format of this definition is: Give this a try: sort -s -n -k 1,1 The -s disables 'last-resort' sorting, which sorts on everything that wasn't part of a specified key. 4 -n file In both cases the output is as follows: chrX 66. On second thoughts, you're not interested in treating the value as a number, because numerically, 1. Sort a file according to one column content. 14 input. Bash sorting by 3rd column and 1st column. We’ve detailed these and other related topics in the sections below. txt, but if there are same names, I want the 2nd column to be sorted in the reversed way of how they were in the original file, like this: sort -k4,4n -k1,1 bigfile ought to do it. Note that if the columns are visually aligned, i. Also note that you can give it multiple sort fields: From man sort, the relevant parts are:-g, --general-numeric-sort, --sort=general-numeric Sort by general numerical value. 0936819092 6 18. Unix & Linux Meta your communities It isn't what you expected. 2. I have tried using both the -n and the -h flags The -k5,5 tells sort to perform the sort on just the 5th column. -n sorts numerically instead of lexicographically (so "11" will not come before "2,3 Linux sort -Help Wanted. The sort utility may be told what column to sort by, and what delimiter to use when specifying columns: $ sort -t ',' -k11,11 data. 6mb", "4. txt 4 linux 1000 3 bsd 1000 2 winxp 4000 1 mac 2000 # -nr means numeric and reverse # Sort It looks like you want a reverse sort on the first, numeric, part, . Example below: Example below: The following sorts on three (3) columns: last-name, reverse age (oldest first--swap $^b and $^a for reverse sort), then first-name. Not lexical sorting. cat example. Sorting within a file by columns Linux. Sorting is alphabetic so prepending + or -to the sort criteria forces numeric comparison (e. With given data, output is "Signal Dispatcher" #4 daemon prio=9 os_prio=0 cpu=0. txt tail -n +2 keywords/copy. txt sort: multi-character tab `\\t' Since no specific shell was mentioned, here's how to do the whole thing in the zsh shell:. txt Sample output: Usually there are pages of output so I will just sort -r | tail -30 and the largest number is right above the new prompt. Combining several sorts with different field separators did not yield the right output. sort(+*. Sorting data by specific columns. 959707 cluster The worst is when you can't pass the sort -kX. This is because sort is actually considering that the string to sort starts just after the comma, and not from the first letter of the column. like a recursive search would do. The sort command compares all lines from the given files and sorts them in the specified order based on the sort keys. The sort command can help us to rearrange lines from standard input (stdin) or from a text file. 31ms elapsed=478. Sort line based on the value of a I'm trying to numerically sort a long list of csv file based on the number in the first column, using below command:-> head -1 file. (All columns should be sorted ascendingly, but the first two should be sorted Without -k1,1 the following columns will influence the relative order (as secondary and so on sorting key) in that case. I'm trying to filter rows of a . The sort needs to be based on timestamp values contained within each of file's rows. A regular alphabetical sort produces: $ sort numbers. there is a non constant number of spaces between each fields, you must use the -b option. Improve this question. Unix "sort" command for a CSV file. The 7th field of data looks like this: 0. 8. abc_2, abc_1, abc_10 the result is abc_1, abc_2, abc_10. Tutorial on using sort, a UNIX and Linux command for sorting lines of text files. Masked/Hidden Partition. A single space is the default value of FS (the internal field separator) and will cause awk to trim flanking blanks (tabs and/or spaces) from the data as well as treat substrings separated by runs of consecutive blanks as fields. $ sort --key 2 --reverse --numeric-sort myfile > mysortedfile The only problem is that this sorts the line with "Person Age" as if it had the numeric value of zero, and moves it to the last line of the file. 1e-06 0. The man/info pages are not This is an obsolete (or at least obsolescent) "traditional" syntax for specifying field and column values, documented in info sort: On systems not conforming to POSIX 1003. Note: my linux use sort from busybox that support only the following options: $ sort --help BusyBox v1. We can also sort by the second or third column. sort -k1,1 -gk2,2 -gk3,3 file. 3rn data. Sort Excel by derived column then by other column. HINT! If you'd like to count from the line begining you can use -t to accept absent char to treat the line as one field:. 13. cluster-7402-walk-0270 100 136 SP3 0. At least those are options available on my version of sort on CentOS. Is it possible to sort a huge text file using Linux sort The sort -k 1,1n means sort on field one (only) and do a numeric sort. How do I sort a CSV file by a specific column? 0. sort by column I am trying to sort the file numerically by values from the second column. gz log100. This also makes it: linux shell, sort column 1 in ascending order column 3 in descending order. only column 11). This will also work with duplicate records. – That's the last-resort comparison that compares full lines lexically when they otherwise compare equally based on the sort key specification. 2 8. sort -k2,2n file. You're merely seeing ties broken by going to the rest of the line. In other words, in an English language locale, or any locale where , is a thousand separator (see the Learn the sort command through various examples. My file contains 3 columns numbers, like 5 lines data below: 1 811036 395 2 811036 195 1 811036 295 2 811036 95 1 811036 95 I want to sort column 1 in ascending order and column 3 in descending or Stack Overflow for Teams Where developers & technologists share private knowledge with coworkers; Advertising & Talent Reach devs & technologists worldwide about your product, service or employer brand; OverflowAI GenAI features for Teams; OverflowAPI Train & fine-tune LLMs; Labs The future of collective knowledge sharing; About the company As a point of minor interest: the sort that comes with OS X actually is GNU sort, but it it is very old, and predates support for -V; as of OS X 10. In the example file below, I want to sort by column 1 and then by column 2 numerically. extract_data | awk 'NR<3{print $0;next}{print $0| "sort -r"}' This prints the first two lines verbatim and pipes the rest through sort. The output is written to the console. 67 0. To sort in numerical order, you need to add the n specifier-n, --numeric-sort compare according to string numerical value e. gz log102. tsv Also, according to this macOS man page, "The Apple man page for sort includes GNU long options for all the above, but these have not (yet) been implemented under macOS. 6r -k1. See sort Invocation for an explanation of the subtle differences between these two options. As @terdon noticed, the inclusion of X and Y and the fact that the numbers run from 1 to 22 identifies this as a possible list of human chromosomes (which is why he says that chromosome M (mitochondrial) may be missing). So the expected output would be: Get-Content adat. txt | sort -k1 -n > keywords. awk -F ' ' is the same as just awk. Try adding:-n, --numeric-sort compare according to string numerical value. sort -k 3 or:sort /. Then sort sorts first by the 2nd field numerically, then by the 1st field numerically, then by the 3rd field lexically. To sort a list of numbers, one would usually use sort -n: $ sort -n -o list. I'm in CentOS. Lk-1024oL) The ** glob pattern matches like * but across / in pathnames, i. Ask Question Asked 2 years, 6 months ago. Linux sort numerically based on first column. The second is the actual date in DD/MM/YYYY format, and the third one is time. The option -k 3,3n -k 4,4n sorts each column. field? 1. in This will tell sort to use commas as delimiters and sort in ascending lexicographical order based column 11 to 11 (i. ' (for the version numbers) and the default whitespace (for the Step numbers). 1 and is smaller than 1. *m4a\)" | LC_ALL=C sort -n > use sort: sort -n file1 > file2 -n, --numeric-sort compare according to string numerical value. The third column should be in reverse order (highest to lowest values). When I use the sort command, I notice that the column that the sort is being done on it and the column before that are removed. 0. So sort -k3 sorts based on what's on the right of the 2nd transition from a non-blank to a When sorting numbers stored as text, it‘s important to understand the difference between lexicographic and numeric sorting. It just doesn't sort in the way you expected. If you omit the -in front of the sort field then it will be sorted in ascending order. tail -n +2 meta/201508_1 | sort -k1 -n > meta. The keydef argument is a restricted sort key field definition. As a result, the last column of the input table is #5. q@bam" (10 characters), and there's only one space before that field, and to sort them numerically, you could use:qstat | head -n 2 qstat | sed 1,2d | sort -k8. Consider this example: # Sort reverse by column1 $ sort -nrk 1 data. However if you -k 2n (sorts by the second column using numeric ordering) DEMO. sort -t, -k4. -r Looking at the table, in column#1 there are spaces between first name and last name. 7. Note that the leading blanks are included in the column (the default separator is the transition from a non-blank to a blank), that Sort by 2nd column by selecting it in visual mode (e. You can use. Any help would be much appreciated. 0736 chr1 91. Sort 3rd column when others are already sorted. Thanks. txt By default, sort sorts character-by-character in lexicographical order, based on the current locale's collation sequence. You can do. csv | sort -t',' -k2 -n To sort by column 8 (the "queue" column), considering only the numeric portion, and assuming that the leading text is always "comp. txt Mark 3 Bob 12 Jane 48 Tashi 54 sort -t: -k2 Sorts on the part of the line that goes from the second field to the end of the line. k1. split(",")[4]). I'm new at sort, so this answer could probably be improved. Nevertheless, we can control which part of the line to sort with the use of the -k option (key). Sort CSV file based on first column. Sort alphanumeric string in Unix using custom sort order. tsv but it didn't work since this didn't consider the scientific notation (like 2. It takes a number and a string as input and will sort the column according to the numbers. sed. Another option would be sort -k1,1 bigfile | sort --stable -n -k4,4 The stable sort means that ties on the 4th field are resolved by the initial position, which is set by the first pass of sort to be first field. I read the LC_ALL=C in the 'sort' help/man but hadn't payed too much attention to it (or rather didn't understand how to exactly use it). g. 959707 cluster-7402-walk-0270 113 137 SP1 0. The sort command will write the sorted result to standard output (stdout). -t can be used to change the delimiter between fields. The GNU sort sorting algorithm being stable, you'll get the original order in the input, so:. The second column is first sorted and then the first column is arranged. 1 10 30 word01. That way I don't have to worry about lines with the most hits going off the top of the screen. With -k1,1 only the first column is used as sorting key - and the relative order of lines with the same key is not changed (i. If you want to sort on the second field, you have to specify where the sort key ends: sort -t: -k2,2 to sort on the second field only. For example, if there are lines foo:42:bar:baz:blabla and foo:42:baz:bar:blabla, the former is sorted before the latter with these key options because of Now I tried to sort the file based on the last field decreasingly. I’ve included several examples to show the awk -F'[:,]' '{print $16}' test. Edit: I just noticed that in your output the file size column appears to be the 6th one! have you tried -nk6? Tested on my Hardy Heron, these work: ls -al | sort -nk5; ls -al | sort -k5n; ls -al | sort If you want to sort by the number that begins the XX Total score: yy field (e. Please help me with SORT command in linux. tsv with 13 columns, the last column (the 13th columns) looks like this: 2. However, this method of sorting mixes the column headers in with the rest of the lines of output. Sorting Numerically by One Column. The -f option disables sorting, so ls would just list the files in the I'm trying to sort a file by second column, but in reverse order. This does what you say you want when I try it with your data: sort -k1. For numeric sorts, the This will sort based on penultimate column, it will extract and prepend the penultimate column at the start of each line and then applied numeric sort over it. I haven't used sort command before and I am suspicious I may be doing something wrong. Then, give more details, for . example. Improve this answer. You can use the key option of the sort command, which takes a "field number", so if you wanted the second column: sort -k2 -n yourfile -n, --numeric-sort compare according to string numerical value. It has a more permissive format than that allowed by -n but it How can I sort a text file with GNU sort starting with alphanumeric sort by one column, followed by numerical sort in the next column? I tried sort -n -k1,2 file. txt 10 200 42 5 7. ; Munge the data so that the :: separators are replaced by some other character. Linux file sort with incomplete columns. Similarly, what you call a problem with Linux is actually a "problem" with one particular program, sort. -n numeric sort (not needed here, as in the example numeric and alphabetic would be the same). So. as the decimal radix regardless of the locale of the user; has sorting built-in and structures to hold tables (note that GNU awk can do that as well) But instead of sorting files lexicographically, I would like to sort them numerically: the first column in both files is an ID. Additionally, to sort more than one field, we need to specify the key for each field in the order we want to sort. I'm using the linux shell in a jupyter notebook. 123777 sorts before 23456 because in your locale 1 sorts before 2 (I guess it is so in any sane locale). Consider a file numbers. Linux shell - Sort on a numerical column. a b a This is because the two as are separated by the b - they are not consecutive lines. If you use = as the field separator, the cpu value is in the 4th field. 1e-06). Therefore, you'll have to do one of two things: Count an empty field in between each :: pair. Is there any way to sort considering the scientific notation like this: Here is one to sort various columns in a csv file by numeric and dictionary order, columns 5 and after as dictionary order linux shell, sort column 1 in ascending order column 3 in descending order. I'd try to actually change the underlying data type to int instead of string or apply manual sorting as suggested by lem2802. txt This does the reverse sort on columns 1-6, ignores column 7 and a forward sort on columns 8 to 14. 2 data which sorts starting with the second character in column 1, etc. Apologies if the answer is already here, but all the answers I have found so far suggest either the -h flag or the -n Unix & Linux help chat. In the case of TAB, that's going to be byte values 0 to 7 which In case you do not have the -V option in your sort command, there is an alternative: sort by first column starting on 4th character (-k1. Consider a text file containing file information with different columns. Sorting Columns From File BASH. Linux sort doesn't work with negative float numbers (3 answers) Closed 8 years ago. linux; sorting; Share. In this tutorial, we learn how to sort by multiple columns in Linux. bash sort list of strings by number What is the simplest way to sort a list of lines, sorting on the last field of each line? Each line may have a variable number of fields. Sign up or log I want to use second column to re-arrange the lines from highest number to lowest. 7n file will do job. gz) I want to sort this from the lowest to the highest by the first column. Use sort -nk1,1 -t, or otherwise with -k1 you're sorting on the full line where , is discarded in numbers as it's interpreted as a thousand separator. sort by column linux. With -n, you get:. 1 2 3 20 30 The numeric sort also deals with negative numbers, decimal points, and thousands separators (as determined by your locale). – phyatt Commented Nov 7, 2016 at 15:00 @Six, in the C locale, comparison is done byte-by-byte on the byte value, that is strcoll() (the comparison function used by sort) works the same as strcmp() there (and there only). pre { overflow:scroll; margin:2px; padding:15px; border:3px inset; margin-right:10px; } Code: sort -g - | The UNIX and Linux Forums sort operates on entire lines. Share. I want the output to be sorted by first column and second column based on first column. 034 9. If you want to sort numerically (i. 212 ___ I am using the following sort command on a numeric column of large tab separated file. This means, sort will consider the first and last names two separate columns. 645 4. The output will be: Jul29 16:52 Jul30 19:06 Jul31 17:04 Aug1 17:22 Aug2 18:53 Aug3 21:44 Aug4 22:56 Aug6 17:01 If you don't mind using awk, you can take advantage of awk's built-in pipe abilities, e. I want to do a natural sort. ps k -%cpu -e -o %cpu Here, k sorts the output based on field provided and -%cpu is to sort it in descending order. 959707 cluster-7402-walk-0270 117 136 SP4 0. I've often had to write a Perl script to deal with those situations, and wish I didn't. The CaseWorkerName is column 11. sort -t $'\t' -k 4,4 -V <filename> If you're getting errors about the $'\t' then make sure your shell is bash. Once you press Enter, the Sort command will analyze the contents of the file and rearrange the lines in I want to use AWK or bash commands to sort the second column based on the first column to have the output as follows: 4 79. Suffix the char. txt sort -k 3,3 myFile would display the file sorted by the 3 rd column assuming the columns are separated by sequences of blanks (ASCII SPC and TAB characters in the POSIX/C locale), according to the sort order defined by the current locale. index with b to fix this problem, i. 10. The -k option specifies the characters to sort by. 2495580809 5 112. sort -t% -k1. 1,4. Follow answered Jan 8 at 12:31 The sort function takes a mapper, here sorting on lines that have been split on commas, and then taking the 5th column (zero-index = 4). Your LC_ALL=C sort -n did the trick the easier and correct way. txt word01. Sort Delimited file column wise. Redirecting Sorted Output to New File. I want to cut various columns of this output and view it sorted according to various columns. This is the command I'm using but it's not working: sort -k 2,2 Filename | sort -k 11,11 | sort -k 3,3 -r -o test_sorting. Usage: sort [-nru] [FILE] Sort lines of text -n Sort numbers -r Reverse sort order -u Suppress duplicate lines you can use the following: sort -k1M -k1. the number in the first column can have different widt), then try::%!sort -n Don't worry about the =, it will not modify any line, it will just change their order. Eg: chr1 1378131 1378132 chr2 1476810 1476811 chr4 254941 254942 chr12 189386 189387 chr16 869712 869713 chr16 1476500 1476501 So all we have to do is create a new class of ours that supports our own type(s) and allow for sorting appropriately. txt I've often wanted to sort strings with numbers in them so that, when sorting e. Although technically it's a quirk of the dir program, not of Windows. 7011 5. Danstahr Danstahr Linux sort by column and in reverse order. . Easy as that! Now the list is alphabetized by the fruit name while preserving the order of the other columns. . The first one is some sort of alpha-numeric code. sort -k1. sorted will be the resulting sorted list. Type the following command in the command prompt: sort -n numbers | sort | uniq -c As stated in the comments. *mp3\|. dat | Sort-Object Is there an option similar to the Linux sort -n option? powershell; sorting; Then sort by the first column using a custom property that casts the string value to an integer (for numeric sorting Sorting numeric columns based on another numeric column. Details. sort multiple column file. --numeric-sort compare according to string numerical value -r Example 5: Numerical Sorting Using the “sort” Command in Linux. 8212 4. 03s tid=0x00000000013db000 nid=0x1467 runnable [0x0000000000000000] "Finalizer" #3 I don't know of a sort implementation that understands \t or other such character representations, you need to use ANSI-C quoting instead:. One of those columns is a human-readable file size ("1. (use equal sign as a separator => -t=; use 3rd column as a sort column => -k3) A sample file is as follows: now with numeric timestamps at the beginning, and finally removes the timestamp to get the The question (sort by a manually defined order) is very interesting. answered Oct 26 strange behavior with linux sort. 4620 chr3 116. file. 7711028907 5 20. Follow answered Jan 2, 2013 at 11:03. 2 10 25 word01. For proper numeric sorting, always use the -n I need to sort a file using shell sort in linux. Modified 2 years, 3 months ago. @user2452340 You could do this: sort -t, -nk3 filename. 68 9. Commented Sep 15, 2017 at 16:27. Learn efficient numeric sorting techniques in Linux using powerful command-line tools, exploring sorting methods, options, and practical examples for data manipulation. By combining the basic options we’ve listed so far, you could perform complex sorting operations like reverse From googling and reading man pages I figured out this sorts the first column by numeric values. awk -F ',' '(NR>2)’ filename. 1 10 20 word01. 5559494707 5 50. The -r option specifies sorting in reverse order. In part, RTFM for sort, but the number before the comma is the start column, and the number after is the end column. 959707 cluster-7402-walk-0270 117 136 SP2 0. Usage. Alternatively you can solve it via sort and sed: Well, your column is not numeric, but a text column that contains numeric string values. Unix & Linux Meta your communities . However, the way it is formulated right now will probably result in lots of comments of the form "don't parse ls", "XY problem", "needs more details". 23 Sorting within a file by columns Linux. The following command is used to sort the lines of the text file “tecmint. csv | LC_ALL=C sort 1,Linux from Scratch,Gerard Beekmans,1999 10,The Gulag Archipelago,Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn,1973 2,Practical Rust,Rustacean Team,2023 In the command above, we temporarily set the LC_ALL=C for the sort command, so it won’t affect the LC_ALL of the shell. Control+v), then run:!sort or to sort by third column. I tried: sort -k2n -r file. Yn shell command a fixed position. 4. csv from command line. ejkkjq dxuorh ukf ihwk dhp vigpxs kjcvqzlms suapsl zgixlwz ravc