sort question

[Joel Hammer]

Thanks you guys.
I settled on 
 sort -t'/' -k 3n -k 1n -k 2n
This was quick and easy and didn't need fixing up the dates in .calendar.
I never could have figured this out from the instructions in man sort.

Thanks a load.

BTW, pcal, once you get over the shock of all the options and the lack
of a GUI, is actually quite nice.  I hope there is a way to integrate
this with my palm pilot, once I get my computers speaking to my usb
pilot sometime in the near future. If not, I'll dump the pilot, that's
how much I like pcal. Maybe I would look for a linux pda instead.

Joel


On Wed, Jul 02, 2003 at 08:45:01PM -0400, Kurt Wall wrote:
> Quoth Joel Hammer:
> > I want to sort the contents of my .calendar file for pcal.
> > The entries looks like this:
> > 01/04/04 Item
> > 1/3/3 Item
> > And so on.
> > I want to wind up with all the dates in proper order in the file.
> > I have two problems I cannot figure out.
> > First, when trying just to sort the fields numerically, using this sort
> > of construction:
> >      sort -n -t'/' -n +1
> > will sort the file numerically by the day of the month.
> 
> First, you want to normalize the appearance of the data. Here are
> the contents of "calendar":
> 
> 01/04/04
> 05/2/2
> 1/3/3
> 6/23/02
> 3/19/03
> 2/23/03
> 06/22/02
> 
> Now, an awk one-liner to normalize it
> 
> $ awk -F'/' 'printf("%02d/%02d/%02d\n", $1, $2, $3) }' < calendar
> 01/04/04
> 05/02/02
> 01/03/03
> 06/23/02
> 03/19/03
> 02/23/03
> 06/22/02
> 
> With the output normalized, it should be easy to sort:
> 
> $ awk -F'/' 'printf("%02d/%02d/%02d\n", $1, $2, $3) }' < calendar | sort -n
> 01/03/03
> 01/04/04
> 02/23/03
> 03/19/03
> 05/02/02
> 06/22/02
> 06/23/02
> 
> > But, 
> >      sort -n -t'/' -n +0-2
> > will sort the month (The first field) numerically 
> > but the next two fields are sorted like strings. Is there a way to make all
> > the fields sort numerically?
> 
> See above.
> 
> > Second, is there way to sort the fields in random order, that is, year,
> > month, and day?
> 
> Sort by key fields, appending "n" to each field to specify that it should
> be sorted numerically. Thus, using "/" as the field separator and sorting
> by the 2nd field and then the 1st field:
> 
> $ awk -F'/' 'printf("%02d/%02d/%02d\n", $1, $2, $3) }' < calendar \
> > | sort -t'/' -k 2n -k 1n
> 05/02/02
> 01/03/03
> 01/04/04
> 03/19/03
> 06/22/02
> 02/23/03
> 06/23/02
> 
> Kurt
> -- 
> Only adults have difficulty with childproof caps.
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