CODEWITHSUNDEEP
linuxshell
Gaurav K
Gaurav K

Reputation: 2975

sort -c output being redirected to a file: Linux command

Why is sort -c output not being redirected to file temp.txt? If I remove -c, it does redirect, as seen below:

$ cat numericSort
33:Thirty Three:6
11:Eleven:2
45:Forty Five:9
01:Zero One:1
99:Ninety Nine:9
18:Eighteen:01
56:Fifty Six:4
78:Seventy Eight:2


$ sort numericSort > temp.txt


$ cat temp.txt
01:Zero One:1
11:Eleven:2
18:Eighteen:01
33:Thirty Three:6
45:Forty Five:9
56:Fifty Six:4
78:Seventy Eight:2
99:Ninety Nine:9


$ rm temp.txt


$ sort -c numericSort > temp.txt
sort: numericSort:2: disorder: 11:Eleven:2


$ cat temp.txt
# No Output Here

Upvotes: 0

Views: 78

Answers (2)

Rahul
Rahul

Reputation: 77896

Based on document of sort command

-c, --check, --check=diagnose-first

          check for sorted input; do not sort

Check whether the given files are already sorted: if they are not all sorted, print an error message and exit with a status of 1.

so your command sort -c numericSort > temp.txt is essentially just checking whether the file numericSort is sorted or not. If not sorted print error on STDERR and hence you don't see any output to temp.txt. Probably you want to redirect STDERR instead like

sort -c numericSort 2> temp.txt

Upvotes: 3

Collin
Collin

Reputation: 12287

The output of sort -c goes to stderr, not stdout.

If you want to redirect that instead:

$ sort -c numericSort 2> temp.txt

Upvotes: 4

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