sort --version
sort (textutils) 2.0.14 Written by Mike Haertel and Paul Eggert. [April 2001] and, FWIW uname -a Linux 2.4.7-10 #1 Thu Sep 6 17:27:27 EDT 2001 i686 unknown I read man and info pages, but didn't find an explanation for the facts below : [anyway, please, bear in mind that english is not my mother tongue] Consider a four-line text file, referred here as `file_name', which is made of the following lines : 5 6c 3 7c 1 9c 4 8c sort -k 2,2 file_name returns correctly 5 6c 3 7c 4 8c 1 9c but sort -k 2.1,2.1 file_name (say I want to ignore char[s] past the numerical values, I know that's trivial, but assume I have a very long file to sort and using a one char only key, speeds it up significately) returns 1 9c 3 7c 4 8c 5 6c that is, it sorts as if no key were given, using the entire line as the key. ------- the problem seems to be in the end delimiter of the key, as doing sort -k 2.1,2 file_name works as expected, returning 5 6c 3 7c 4 8c 1 9c whereas sort -k 2,2.1 file_name returns the unexpected one 1 9c 3 7c 4 8c 5 6c Hope this helps. ------------------------------------------------- By the way, let me ask two related questions, whose answers I couldn't find documented anywhere : 1) Sometimes I need to sort file using as key absolute char position, as opposed to char position relative to fields. Say I want to sort a file using as unique key chars in columns 11 through 16 (Assume each line of the file has 25 or more chars) I issue the following command sort -k 1.11,1.16 other_file_name and everything works, even if the first field has less than 11 chars, say just 5 or 6) [The same happens if I were to use two keys in place of one, say sort -k 1.11,1.16 -k 1.21,1.23 other_file_name ] Is that an undocumented feature, or just something which could stop working with some next release of `sort' (textutils) ? 2) What really happens when defining a key you express it in reverse order ? e.g. sort -k 8,3 file_name_another that is reversing fields (I assume my file has at least 8 fields) and sort -k 2.6,2.3 file_name_another that is reversing char position in a field (I assume second filed is at least 6 chars long) It seems that the sort is performed as if no key were given, using the entire line as the key; but I'm not sure. David Fabiani [EMAIL PROTECTED] __________________________________________________________________ Abbonati a Tiscali! Con Tiscali By Phone puoi anche ascoltare ed inviare email al telefono. Chiama Tiscali By Phone all' 892 800 http://byphone.tiscali.it _______________________________________________ Bug-textutils mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/bug-textutils
