Question

I am trying to learn bash/shell *nix commands /scripting.
So rather than writing a python program, I thought of trying it out using bash/awk etc but am having a hard time.
I have a huge text (its actually csv )file

 id_1, id_2, some attributes.

I want to sort this file based on id2?
how do i do this?
Thanks

Answer 1

Use the --key option for sort.

For example, the following sorts input.csv on the second field (using comma as a field separator) and writes the output to output.csv.

 sort --key=2,2 -t',' input.csv > output.csv

p.s. Don’t forget to use the -n option if you’re doing a numerical sort.

For more info, see the man page for sort.