On Thu, Nov 08, 2007 at 03:42:33PM +0100, Rodolfo Medina wrote: >> >> > In the documentation of `sort' I couldn't find the possibility of >> >> > ignoring digits. I have a document that contains names and phone >> >> > numbers and I wish to sort it by names. The `-k' option doesn't seem >> >> > to help because names and numbers are not in definite fields. >> >> [...] >> >> Here are a few lines from the file: >> >> 3938269241 320192481 Stan Laurel >> 3939424701 0815605311 Oliver Hardy >> 800151611 800822051 Harpo Marx >> ABC Travel 0111111111 33811111111 >> Acade;Paolo;;; 335111111 Paolo Acade >> Acade;Pasquale;;; 335122211 Pasquale Acade >> >> I wish it to be sorted by letters (i.e. by names) - and also eliminate those >> ugly semicolons!
Andrew Sackville-West <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > well the semicolons are easy: > > sed -i -e 's/^.*\; //' filename > > this (untested) should match any string at the beginning of a line > endind with semi-colon/space and replace it with nothing. It will do > it in place on the existing filename, so make a copy first, so you can > confirm its behavior. > > You need, in my opinion, to get this data into a more uniform format > to do much with it. And you need to decide a couple of things. Do you > want the numbers first or second. Do you want to sort on The whole > name? the last name? how do you want to handle things like ABC Travel? > > Also, are these lines representative of all the data? can you rely on > the lines looking only like this and not having any other format? Thanks for your reply. All I want is to sort lines by letters ignoring digits. It's amazing to me that such a potent tool as `sort' can't do that! Maybe some other tool? Thanks Rodolfo -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
