Linux – Solaris + sort file according to date and time by sort command

linuxsolarissort

I have along list that created in /var/tmp/file.txt from some script (in Solaris machine)
the following list have 4 fields

please advice how to sort the list according to the following TIMESTAMP ( by sort command or other solaris command )

for example the date & time 15-10-2009 08:29:18 should be before 15-10-2009 08:29:10 … etc

example of file.txt ( not sorted file )

  PHONE_NUMBER         TIMESTAMP                   ID  TYPE
  -------------------- -------------------        ---- -------------- 
  972544111222         15-10-2009 08:29:18         20  sharp_gx10
  33633333333          24-09-2009 16:17:45         20  other_mm_phone
  841990000043         08-10-2009 09:04:38         60  other_mm_phone
  972541230001         08-10-2009 14:23:48         20  other_mm_phone

.
.
.
.

I try the sort command but not clearly why file.txt not sorted

sort -t' ' -k2.7,2.10n -k2.4,2.5n -k2.1,2.2n -k3 /var/tmp/file.txt

we get the output:

  5938123456789141     12-10-2009 13:09:22         20 other_phone
  5511223322332233     07-03-2012 08:13:43         20 other_phone


  888888               10-02-2012 14:13:58         60 LegacyPhone
  111111               10-02-2012 14:13:59         60 LegacyPhone
  777777               10-02-2012 14:13:59         60 LegacyPhone
  999999               16-02-2012 14:07:32         10 other_phone
  87654321             11-10-2009 09:39:37         10 other_phone

Best Answer

sort -t' ' -k2.7,2.10n -k2.4,2.5n -k2.1,2.2n -k3

If you have control of the original script so you can print the date as YYYY-MM-DD then it would sort naturally so we would not need to pick apart the year, month and date fields in the sort command, but could just use -k2 in the same way we just use -k3 for the timestamp.

Or if I have counted your fixed width format correctly,

sort -k1.28,1.31n -k1.25,1.26n -k1.22,1.23n -k3

Or if you are not using fixed widths and have variable white space, then (-b to ignore spaces but note no -n)

sort -b -k2.7,2.10 -k2.4,2.5 -k2.1,2.2 -k3

Or to sort only part of the file (and really it would be a lot easier simply to alter the program creating this data in the first place):

(head -2 file; /usr/xpg4/bin/tail -n +3 file |sort -b -k2.7,2.10 -k2.4,2.5 -k2.1,2.2 -k3)
Related Topic