I have a data with the following format: Now I tried to sort the file based on the last field decreasingly. I tried the following commands but it wasn't sorted as we expected. What's the right way to do it? Here is the sample data. Answer Using bash, this will do the trick: Notice the dollar sign in front of

Sorting a tab delimited file

I have a data with the following format:

foo<tab>1.00<space>1.33<space>2.00<tab>3

Now I tried to sort the file based on the last field decreasingly. I tried the following commands but it wasn’t sorted as we expected.

$ sort -k3nr file.txt  # apparently this sort by space as delimiter

$ sort -t"t" -k3nr file.txt
  sort: multi-character tab `\t'

$ sort -t "`/bin/echo 't'`" -k3,3nr file.txt
  sort: multi-character tab `\t'

What’s the right way to do it?

Here is the sample data.

Answer

Using bash, this will do the trick:

$ sort -t$'t' -k3 -nr file.txt

Notice the dollar sign in front of the single-quoted string. You can read about it in the ANSI-C Quoting sections of the bash man page.

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Answer