On Tue 9-Jan-07 4:11am -0600, Vigil wrote:
>>> This works on my admittedly small test set:
>>>
>>> :%!sort -k3 -t/
>> You're making several unstated assumptions.
>>
>> (1) The records are already sorted by month and day.
> I would have thought that, too, but sorting this:
>
> 01/04/2007 blah
> 01/03/2007 blah
> 12/30/2006 blah
> 07/05/2003 blah
> 02/04/2007 blah
> 02/04/2006 blah
> 14/32/1996 blah
> 02/04/1996 blah
>
> give this:
>
> 02/04/1996 blah
> 14/32/1996 blah
> 07/05/2003 blah
> 02/04/2006 blah
> 12/30/2006 blah
> 01/03/2007 blah
> 01/04/2007 blah
> 02/04/2007 blah
>
> which, as you can see, has sorted by month and day, too,
> or is that just happenstance?
I had assumed the latter - but read on.
>> (3) Everything to the right of the year is the same in each
>> record.
> Ah, I see why. My example sorts beginning at that column, not just on that
> column alone.
I thought I knew the unix sort utility fairly well. I'm a
bit baffled.
I wrote a simple program to generate 1,000 records with just
random dates (month 1-12, day 1-30, year 1976-2007).
Sorting with:
:%!sort -t/ -k3
and
:%!sort -t/ -k3.1n,3.4 -k1n,2
produced identical correct results!
I then modified my program to add a comma and a random
letter. Of course, your method failed since your 3rd field
includes the trailing 2 characters.
But modifying your method to:
:%!sort -t/ -k3n
worked perfectly ????
BTW, I'm using: sort (GNU coreutils) 5.3.0
on Windows XP. I know this discussion is a bit off topic
but I have found it fascinating. Thanks, Vigil, for bring
it up.
--
Best regards,
Bill
