Re: sort -g (generic numeric) is working only for the first key

[Wasim Akram S.N.]

Hi Anreas / Eric,
> Erik Auerswald <address@hidden> writes:
>
>   
>> Hi Wasim,
>>
>> On Sun, Mar 01, 2009 at 08:09:43PM +0530, Wasim Akram S.N. wrote:
>>     
>>> Hi,
>>> I don't know whether the following is really a bug.
>>> ...
>>> address@hidden:~/temp$ sort -g -k1,3 -t \t a
>>>       
>> This tells sort to regard the first three fields as one key. I think
>> you need something like "sort -g -k1,1 -k2,2 -k3,3 -t \t a" which uses
>> the three fields as three keys.
>>     
>
> This won't work either since the separator 't' does not occur in the
> input.  If you want a TAB character as a separator (assuming there are
> really TABs between the fields in the input) you need to pass a literal
> TAB as the argument to -t.  With bash you can do that with -t $'\t'.
>
> Andreas.
>
>   

Based on your suggestion, I tried this and now its working.

address@hidden:~/temp$ sort -g -k1,1 -k2,2 -k3,3 -k4,4 -t $'\t' a
1    1    1
2    2    2
4    1    1
4    2    2
4    10    10
4    100    100
10    10    10
100    10    1
200    1    1000
200    2    10
200    20    100
address@hidden:~/temp$

Thanks a ton

Regards,
Wasim Akram