unix scripting

[Kerilyn O'Donnell]

I left my scripting book at work and need a quick script to read in my text file and put the numbers in order which aren't necessarily at the beginning of the line. For instance, the text file looks like this:

Me9999ne
dog189
Horse8454

I want the new file to look like this:
Dog189
Horse8454
Me9999

Can someone please help me out here?

Thanks

[James R. Ferguson]

Hi:

If the numeric portion of the record (line) is separated from the alphabetic string, then treat it as the sort key and sort. For instance if the field separator is a blank and the numbers are the second field you could code:

# sort -k 2nb

Take a look at the man pages for 'sort' for more details.

...JRF...

[vtpaulson]

Hi,

Use sort command to do this task...

cat filename | sort

Regards,

Paulson

[James R. Ferguson]

Hi:

Oops, forgot to show the input/output to the sort:

# sort -k 2nb /tmp/input > /tmp/output

...JRF...

[Robin Wakefield · Accepted solution]

sed 's/[0-9]/ &/' {file} | sort -k 2nb | sed 's/ //'

will give you the blank before the 1st number, sort it, then remove the blank.

Robin.