Question

2

Sort lines in text file with specific separator in Linux

rated 0 times [ 2] [ 0] / answers: 1 / hits: 2243 / 2 Years ago, fri, march 4, 2022, 12:27:03

I need to sort the lines of a text file (without any extension) where the lines are separated by %. When using sort command, those %s are also getting sorted out which I do not want.

How to sort the text file from command line or by any other method and save with same name?

For example:

filename: myfile

Before sorting>>

A line one

%

C line two

%

B line three

%

After sorting>>

%

%

%

A line one

B line three

C line two

Desired>>

A line one

%

B line three

%

C line two

%

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nstitutencert

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1 Year ago

answered 2 Years ago antebrow · Accepted Answer

I would strip out the separator (awk is looking for odd lines), sort it into a temporary file (see comments) and then sed that file to add the separator back.

awk 'NR%2==1' myfile | sort -o tmpfile; sed -r 's/$/

%/g' tmpfile

That just outputs to stdout so stick a > myfile on the end of it if you want it to pipe that back into your file. I've left it bare so you can test it.

Sidebar: There are about a hundred different ways of handling the reinsertion of the separators. These would all work:

awk '{print $0"

%"}'

while read line; do echo -e "$line

%"; done

xargs -i^ echo -e "^

%"  # won't work with a redirection >