Sort command included in Cygwin launched by normal Windows promppt don't accept $ operator for tab character

Question

I have installed Cygwin on my machine and I would to know if there exist a way to use full power of sort command also with the normal DOS prompt.

I have read this question: Unix Sort with Tab Delimiter and the command to sort a tabbed file using the second column is:

sort -t $'\t' -k 2 file.txt

If I launch the command inside the Cygwin environment it works like expected, if I launch it from the normal Windows prompt (I have renamed sort.exe into xsort.exe to avoid conflicting with native Windows sort command) it doesn't works, it not recognize the $ operator and it see \t like two distinct characters and operation fails.

Is it possible to make it working also from the DOS prompt?

score 2 · Answer 1 · edited Jun 13 '13 at 09:43

2

This is regulated by PATH environment variable.

Under DOS prompt run the following:

echo %PATH%

You will see the path C:\cygwin\bin after c:\Windows\system32.

This means that Windows's sort.exe will be used for command sort.

You will need to edit environment variable PATH for your Windows to move c:\cygwin\bin to the left of C:\Windows\system32.

edited Jun 13 '13 at 09:43

Don Cruickshank

5,641
6
48
48

answered Jun 13 '13 at 09:16

Denis Postanogov

21
2

Thanks for your reply, but I already know this. The problem is when I must specify a tab character for sorting tabbed files by second colun. – gialloporpora Jul 02 '13 at 18:49

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Nov 26 '14 at 16:05

1

Try this (in Windows a tab is '^t' rather than '\t'):

sort -t'^t' -k2 file.txt

answered Nov 26 '14 at 16:05

cwarny

997
1
12
27

Sort command included in Cygwin launched by normal Windows promppt don't accept $ operator for tab character

2 Answers2