Sort file in bash shell

Question

I want to sort file, by the first number, which looks like this.

11: wc 1:cmp: 115:wc 7:ls

So i get output in file like this.

1:cmp: 7:ls 11: wc 115:wc

I've tried to sort it my self, but it doesn't work. This is my following code

cat dat | sort -t ":" -k 1 >dat;

What can i do? Thank you!

anubhava · Accepted Answer · 2015-05-18 09:03:14Z

2

You can use this sort command with numeric sort:

sort -t: -nk1 file 1:cmp: 7:ls 11: wc 115:wc

answered May 18, 2015 at 9:03

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2 Comments

thank you it works! i used it like: cat $dat | sort -t: -nk1 >dat;

yes i just did. i couldn't do it before because you must wait like 5 min to mark it.

Logan Lee · Accepted Answer · 2022-09-22 06:28:50Z

For the sort part you can do

$ cat dat | sort -t: -k1,1n 1:cmp: 7:ls 11: wc 115:wc

But if you want to save the sorted lines to dat file again you should do

$ cat dat | sort -t: -k1,1n > dat_copy $ cp dat_copy dat $ rm dat_copy