hansol wrote:Musher,
Thanks very much! That certainly got it sorted out. I'm staring at your code trying to figure out "why" it works, and can't quite grasp it, (..)
Hello, hansol.
My pleasure! I believe that you had to add the -n (string numerical value sort)
because you have a column of numbers as well as a column of letters, even
though you are sorting on the column of letters.
We'd need to validate if this is actually the reason, with various tests:
1) by using your list with the letters first
2) using other sets, such as
ba be 98
bi bo 97
bu by 45
da de 33
di do 56
du dy 11
(or whatever)
and see what happens
or
3) any "real-life" combination of columns with letters and numbers.
I did clean up your list, also, of any unneeded spaces - although technically it
should not have mattered. (You can use the -b parameter if you have only
leading blanks.)
Finally, IMO, these problems are best searched not with google, but through a
meta-searcher such as info.com. Type "linux" in front, too; otherwise you'll get
all the results for all the other OS's as well. Alternately, although it is not a meta-
searcher per se, ask.com finds meaningful results pretty fast (in my experience.)
Have a great day!
musher0