How to sort a file containing names with a script?

Question

Assuming I have a file called "students" containing this:

NEWTON Isaac
MAXWELL James
EDISON Thomas
TESLA Nikola

how I am supposed to sort these names with a bash script in shell ? Do I need to use a delimiter with carriage return ? Will this support accentuated characters ?

Thanks for your time.

On SO we do encourage people to add their efforts in their post, kindly do so and let us know then. — RavinderSingh13, Sep 23 '19 at 13:25
sort based on first name or last name ? Please give details of the expected output — LearningToCode, Sep 23 '19 at 13:26
Unclear what your problem is. The `sort` command with no options should do exactly what you are asking. — tripleee, Sep 23 '19 at 13:27

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Sep 23 '19 at 13:29

You can make use of the sort function.

$ cat stud.txt
NEWTON Isaac
MAXWELL James
EDISON Thomas
TESLA Nikola
$ sort stud.txt
EDISON Thomas
MAXWELL James
NEWTON Isaac
TESLA Nikola

To sort on last name, use the -k option.

$ sort -k 2 stud.txt
NEWTON Isaac
MAXWELL James
TESLA Nikola
EDISON Thomas

How to sort a file containing names with a script?

1 Answers1