CODEWITHSUNDEEP
bashsorting
Magus
Magus

Reputation: 15104

Using sort with space as a field separator

I'm trying to use the sort command to sort integers in string separated by a space. For example 8 6 5 7 9 56 -20 - 10. I receive the string on the standard output. I tried all of these but nothing works :

sort -t' '
sort -t ' '
sort -t " "
sort -t" "
sort -t=" "

Upvotes: 0

Views: 2116

Answers (2)

betterworld
betterworld

Reputation: 254

echo "8 6 5 7 9 56 -20 - 10" | tr ' ' '\n' | sort -n

Sort can only sort lines.

Upvotes: 1

anubhava
anubhava

Reputation: 785058

You can first read string into an array with space as delimiter then use sort with process substitution:

s='8 6 5 7 9 56 -20 - 10'
read -ra arr <<< "$s"
sort -n <(printf "%s\n" "${arr[@]}")

Output:

-20
-10
5
6
7
8
9
56

To store output in string again:

read -r str < <(sort -n <(printf "%s\n" "${arr[@]}") | tr '\n' ' ')

And check output:

declare -p str
declare -- str="-20 -10 5 6 7 8 9 56"

Upvotes: 1

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