[CLUE-Tech] sort puzzler

[Jeff Cann]

Greetings.

A colleague asked me about whether this problem can be solved with UNIX sort.  
I'm could not think of a way from the shell to solve this problem.  I told 
her I would ask my 'guru' list on clue-tech.

Thanks,
Jeff


 -----Original Message----- 
Sent:   Wednesday, October 22, 2003 1:26 PM 
To:     Cann, Jeffery 
Subject:        unix sort 

Jeff,

I need to sort a file with columns 1-3 sorted ascending, column 4 descending. 
I cannot get any combinations of the unix sort command to output this, so I 
think I need to move to another approach such as perl or awk. 

I can sort on key 4 to get that in descending order with sort  -rn -t \| -k 4 

But I cannot work the combination of sorts... 

$ sort -t \| +1 -3 test.ibm 
IBSALQAVC|006066|01|-1|20065|20065 
IBSALQAVC|006066|01|-2|23684|23684 
IBSALQAVC|006066|01|-3|19821|19821 
IBSALQAVC|006066|01|-7|20428|20428 
IBSALQAVC|006066|01|0|21631|21631 
IBSALQAVC|006066|02|-1|20065|20065 
IBSALQAVC|006066|02|-2|23684|23684 
IBSALQAVC|006066|02|-3|19821|19821 
IBSALQAVC|006066|02|-7|20428|20428 
IBSALQAVC|006066|02|0|21631|21631