Question

I have a file that looks like this

12;6
2;4
9;4
...

In this case the field (column) delimiter is a “;”. I want to sort the fields in each line. An acceptable output would be:

6;12
2;4
4;9

An acceptable solution can assume that the field delimiter is a “;” and the values are integers. An ideal solution is more flexible, allowing different delimiters and for alphanumeric sorting.

This all needs to be done on the command line.

Answer 1

perl -wne '$,=";"; chop; 
    print sort { $a <=> $b } split ";";
    print "\n"' input

If your perl isn’t ancient:

perl -wnE '$,=";"; chop; 
        say sort { $a <=> $b } split ";"' input

You can also do:

perl -F\; -wanE 'chop $F[-1]; $,=";"; say sort { $a <=> $b } @F' input