I have a script that outputs file paths (via find), which I want to sort based on very specific custom logic:
1st sort key: I want the 2nd and, if present, the 3rd
--separated field to be sorted using custom ordering based on a list of keys I supply – but excluding a numerical suffix.
With the sample input below, the list of keys is:
rp,alpha,beta-ri,beta-rs,RC2nd sort key: numeric sorting by the trailing number on each line.
Given the following sample input (note that the /foo/bar/test/example/8.2.4.0 prefix of each line is incidental):
/foo/bar/test/example/8.2.4.0-RC10/foo/bar/test/example/8.2.4.0-RC2/foo/bar/test/example/8.2.4.0-RC1/foo/bar/test/example/8.2.4.0-alpha10/foo/bar/test/example/8.2.4.0-beta-ri10/foo/bar/test/example/8.2.4.0-beta-ri2/foo/bar/test/example/8.2.4.0-beta-rs10/foo/bar/test/example/8.2.4.0-beta-rs2/foo/bar/test/example/8.2.4.0-alpha2/foo/bar/test/example/8.2.4.0-rp10/foo/bar/test/example/8.2.4.0-rp2I expect:
/foo/bar/test/example/8.2.4.0-rp2/foo/bar/test/example/8.2.4.0-rp10/foo/bar/test/example/8.2.4.0-alpha2/foo/bar/test/example/8.2.4.0-alpha10/foo/bar/test/example/8.2.4.0-beta-ri2/foo/bar/test/example/8.2.4.0-beta-ri10/foo/bar/test/example/8.2.4.0-beta-rs2/foo/bar/test/example/8.2.4.0-beta-rs10/foo/bar/test/example/8.2.4.0-RC1/foo/bar/test/example/8.2.4.0-RC2/foo/bar/test/example/8.2.4.0-RC10Advertisement
Answer
Using a variant of my answer to your original question:
./your-script | awk -v keysInOrder='rp,alpha,beta-ri,beta-rs,RC' ' BEGIN { FS=OFS="-" keyCount = split(keysInOrder, a, ",") for (i = 1; i <= keyCount; ++i) keysToOrdinal[a[i]] = i } { sortKey = $2 if (NF == 3) sortKey = sortKey FS $3 sub(/[0-9]+$/, "", sortKey) auxFieldPrefix = "|" FS if (NF == 2) auxFieldPrefix = auxFieldPrefix FS sub(/[0-9]/, auxFieldPrefix "&", $NF) sortOrdinal = sortKey in keysToOrdinal ? keysToOrdinal[sortKey] : keyCount + 1 print sortOrdinal, $0 }' | sort -t- -k1,1n -k3,3 -k5,5n | sed 's/^[^-]*-//; s/|-{1,2}//'./your-script represents whatever command produces the output you want to sort.
Note that an aux. character, |, is used to facilitate sorting, and the assumption is that this character doesn’t appear in the input – which should be reasonable safe, given that filesystem paths usually don’t contain pipe characters.
Any field 2 values (sans numeric suffix) that aren’t in the list of sort keys, sort after the field 2/3 values that are, using alphabetic sorting among them.