Date: Thu, 14 Mar 2002 16:20:03 -0800 (PST) From: Bsd Neophyte <bsdneophyte@yahoo.com> To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: serious problems with understanding the 'sort' command Message-ID: <20020315002003.94109.qmail@web20105.mail.yahoo.com>
next in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
i have been trying to understand this chapter titled "Searching for Files
and Text" for a few weeks now.
unfortunately, this chapter is one of those things, that no matter how
hard you try and how long you try for, you are incapable of understanding
(at least in my case)
this entire chapter, grep and it's derivatives and the sort command have
been extremely frustrating.
i am hung up on the sort command more so than the others, but there are
certain features that are especially difficult to understand.
this is what the book says about the sort command:
sort -options filenames(s)
the following two options are killing me:
-n performs a numeric sort.
(+|-)n begins (+n) or ends (-n) the sort with the field following the n
field
consider the following two examples, that have 8 columns (do
columns=fields ?):
sort -rn +4 list -o num.list
sort -rn -3 list -o num2.list
sort +5n list -o update.list
first i would like some clarification with the (+|-)n option.
in the first example, the +4 says that we start counting from the 5th
field (5th field because we start counting from 0, not 1 right?)... so
when we count, we use fields 5,6,7 right?
in the second example, the -3 says we start counting from the 4th field
backwards right? so 3,2,1,0?
next, i'm confused with what I see with the first two examples and the
last. i notice that in the first two examples the +/- numbers (+4 and -3)
are isolated options, but in the last example, +5n, the two options i
mentioned earlier are combined. i don't understand why this is done, or
what it means. shouldn't it be +5 -n instead of +5n? is +5 -n different
from +5n?
can anyone please help reduce my confusion with this command?
__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Sports - live college hoops coverage
http://sports.yahoo.com/
To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org
with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?20020315002003.94109.qmail>