How to sort a text file with awk?

Question

I would like to reorder a whole file.

file.txt looks like this:

I would like it to look like this:

why don't you use `sort` command in bash ? – Jose Ricardo Bustos M. Oct 15 '15 at 17:03 — Jose Ricardo Bustos M., Oct 15 '15 at 17:03

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Oct 15 '15 at 17:56

2

This will maintain the order of the lines within each grouping:

perl -ane '
    push @{$lines{$F[0]}}, $_;
   } {
    print join "", map {join "", @{$lines{$_}}} sort keys %lines;
' <<END
1 a
2 a
1 b
1 a
2 c
2 b
END

1 a
1 b
1 a
2 a
2 c
2 b

answered Oct 15 '15 at 17:56

glenn jackman

238,783
38
220
352

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Oct 15 '15 at 17:06

1

sort -k1,2 file.txt

produces

answered Oct 15 '15 at 17:06

Chris Koknat

3,305
2
29
30

row 5 must be: 2 11 and row 6 must be: 2 10 – Hamed Ghadimi Oct 15 '15 at 17:12
@HamedGhadimi `sort -k1n -s file.txt` – Jose Ricardo Bustos M. Oct 15 '15 at 17:26
@HamedGhadimi - I don't understand why "2 11" should be before "2 10" – Chris Koknat Oct 15 '15 at 17:28
@JoseRicardoBustosM. Thank you it works. – Hamed Ghadimi Oct 15 '15 at 17:36
@ChrisKoknat This seems to be an indexed series. So the point is to take all `1` entries *in the order they are now* first, then all `2` entries, *in the order they are now* next... – Dan Lowe Oct 16 '15 at 00:39

score 1 · Answer 3 · answered Oct 15 '15 at 17:29

For this is better to use sort command

sort -k1n -s file.txt

Another solution using Gnu-awk 4, Controlling Scanning

gawk '
{d[$1][length(d[$1])+1]=$0}
END{
    PROCINFO["sorted_in"] = "@val_num_asc"; 
    for(key in d){
        for(i=1; i<=length(d[key]); ++i) {
            print d[key][i]
        }
    }
}' file.txt

you get,

How to sort a text file with awk?

3 Answers3