Sstrhsrtj

I'm facing a huge 4-columns file. I'd like to display the sorted file in stdout based on its 3rd column:

cat myFile | sort -u -k3

Is that enough to perform the trick?

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.

Note that the leading blanks are included in the column (the default separator is the transition from a non-blank to a blank), that can make a difference in locales where spaces are not ignored for the purpose of comparison, use the -b option to ignore the leading blanks.

Note that it's completely independent from the shell (all the shells would parse that command line the same, shells generally don't have the sort command built in).

-k 3 is to sort on the portion of the lines starting with the 3^rd column (including the leading blanks). In the C locale, because the space and tab characters ranks before all the printable characters, that will generally give you the same result as -k 3,3 (except for lines that have an identical third field),

-u is to retain only one of the lines if there are several that sort identically (that is where the sort key sorts the same (that's not necessarily the same as being equal)).

cat is the command to concatenate. You don't need it here.

If the columns are separated by something else, you need the -t option to specify the separator.

Given example file a

$ cat a

a c c c

a b ca d

a b  c e

a b c d

With -u -k 3:

$ echo $LANG

en_GB.UTF-8



$ sort -u -k 3 a

a b ca d

a c c c

a b c d

a b  c e

Line 2 and 3 have the same third column, but here the sort key is from the third column to the end of line, so -u retains both. ␠ca␠d sorts before ␠c␠c because spaces are ignored in the first pass in my locale, cad sorts before cc.

$ sort -u -k 3,3 a

a b c d

a b  c e

a b ca d

Above only one is retained for those where the 3rd column is ␠c. Note how the one with ␠␠c (2 leading spaces) is retained.

$ sort -k 3 a

a b ca d

a c c c

a b c d

a b  c e

$ sort -k 3,3 a

a b c d

a c c c

a b  c e

a b ca d

See how the order of a b c d and a c c c are reversed. In the first case, because ␠c␠c sorts before ␠c␠d, in the second case because the sort key is the same (␠c), the last resort comparison that compares the lines in full puts a b c d before a c c c.

$ sort -b -k 3,3 a

a b c d

a b  c e

a c c c

a b ca d

Once we ignore the blanks, the sort key for the first 3 lines is the same (c), so they are sorted by the last resort comparison.

$ LC_ALL=C sort -k 3 a

a b  c e

a c c c

a b c d

a b ca d

$ LC_ALL=C sort -k 3,3 a

a b  c e

a b c d

a c c c

a b ca d

In the C locale, ␠␠c sorts before ␠c as there is only one pass there where characters (then single bytes) sort based on their code point value (where space has a lower code point than c).

If you understand "column" as in text file (4th character) then yes, your solution should work (or even sort -u -k3 myFile to allow sort perform some memory-saving magics with random access). If you understand "column" as in database - a whole entity of data followed by a separator, and variable column width, you'll need something fancier e.g. this sorts ls -l by size

      ls -l |awk '{print $5 " " $0;}'| sort -n | cut -d " " -f 2-

(which is equivalent to trivial ls -lS but serves the example nicely.)

sort -g -k column_number 

is the right command to sort any list having numeric characters using specific column

You can use the awk Velour library:

#!/usr/local/bin/velour -f

{

  q[NR] = $3

  z[NR] = $0

}

END {

  a_sort_by(q, z)

  io_puts(q)

}

$ sort -k 1.3,1.3 myfile

Will sort your myfile file on the third column if your file don't have any separator.

$ cat myfile 

ax5aa 

aa3ya 

fg7ds 

pp0dd 

aa1bb



$ sort -k 1.3,1.3 myfile 

pp0dd 

aa1bb

aa3ya 

ax5aa 

fg7ds 

man page of sort:

[...]
-k, --key=POS1[,POS2]
start a key at POS1 (origin 1), end it at POS2 (default end of line)
[...]
POS is F[.C][OPTS], where F is the field number and C the character position in the field; both are origin 1. If neither -t nor -b is in effect, characters in a field are counted from the beginning of the preceding whitespace. OPTS is one or more single-letter ordering options, which override global ordering options for that key. If no key is given, use the entire line as the key.

With --key=1.3,1.3, you said that there only one field (the entire line) and that you're comparing the third character position of this field.