Script / sort question; sort on last field of a line?

[Tim Writer]

Peter <plp-ysDPMY98cNQDDBjDh4tngg at public.gmane.org> writes:

> On Thu, 4 May 2006, Walter Dnes wrote:
> 
> >  How do I sort on the last (or 2nd last or whatever) field of a line?
> >
> >  One awkward possibility involves rewriting the lines backwards,
> > sorting on what is now the first field, and rewriting the lines
> > backwards a second time.  I'm not aware of a utility to do write lines
> > backwards.  I am *NOT* thinking of "tac" which writes the lines
> > unaltered but reverses their order.  I want to write *EACH INDIVIDUAL
> > LINE* backwards.  The following script does what I want...
> 
> Rewriting backwards and sorting will cause trouble because of padding
> (reversed abcz is before reversed abca)
> 
> 
> sort -rk ... should do it

This is by far the easiest solution posted, although I'm not sure why you
would need "-r". That reverses the sort order (i.e. to reverse alphabetic)
which wasn't in the problem description.

Just to clarify Peter's answer. If you have N fields in a line, use:

    sort -k N

For details see:

    info coreutils sort

-- 
tim writer <tim-s/rLXaiAEBtBDgjK7y7TUQ at public.gmane.org>                                  starnix inc.
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