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runing Sun Unix 5.8 on Sun-Fire-15000

i have a small file (20k) that looks like the following. some fields have 1
space between them, others 2, others more. (. = space)

00290..S.....33.XS798............SUB.......SUB ACTIVE 19971202
00090..S.... 69KV..TSS30 TR LTC TR2 ACTIVE 20050201
00135..S.... 69KV..TSS30 TRLTC TR1 ACTIVE 20050201

the problem is that when i do the following

sort +2 -3 it works the 3rd the list is correctly sorted in the third column.
however, if I want to sort on the 4 colum and do

sort +4 -5 it does not work (see example above), it sorts by the 4th column
only in relation to the 3rd column (x goes first because of the 33), howve i
think it might be related to the 1 vs. 2 spaces.

I though about replacing the spaces with tabs, however some of the fields have
spaces within them leading to problems with alignment.

i also tried
sort -n -k 5,5 -k 4,4 -k 6,6 but that didn't work only if i stoped after
field 3

It seems like the problem is that after field 3 there are differing amounts of
space between fields .


Can Perl Sort do this, new to perl. any help greated appreciated.

colin_lyse wrote:
> [...]
> Can Perl Sort do this, new to perl. any help greated appreciated.

Yes, Perl can help you;

perldoc -f sort
perldoc -q sort


--
Tore Aursand <>
"I know not with what weapons World War 3 will be fought, but World War
4 will be fought with sticks and stones." (Albert Einstein)