CODEWITHSUNDEEP
bashsorting
JinPangPang
JinPangPang

Reputation: 227

How to sort a date file with AM|PM

I have a file with date field like this.

20|1|124|Mar 19 2016  3:00AM
20|1|144|Mar 19 2016  2:00PM
43|1|146|Mar 19 2016  5:30AM
42|1|158|Mar 19 2016  1:50PM
40|1|15|Mar 19 2016  2:30AM

I want to sort by date field, such that the AM will come before PM. so far I have this: 

sort -t"|" -k4 testfile.

But i am not sure how to sort the "AM" and "PM" portion. Any help is appreciated.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 326

Answers (2)

anubhava
anubhava

Reputation: 785631

You can use:

while read -r; do
   IFS='|' read -ra arr <<< "$REPLY"
   date -d "${arr[-1]}" "+$REPLY#%s"
done < file | sort -t# -k2 | cut -d# -f1

40|1|15|Mar 19 2016  2:30AM
20|1|124|Mar 19 2016  3:00AM
43|1|146|Mar 19 2016  5:30AM
42|1|158|Mar 19 2016  1:50PM
20|1|144|Mar 19 2016  2:00PM

Using date command we parse last field in your pipe delimited field and add EPOCH value in each line delimited by #. Then using sort we do the sorting by 2nd field (EPOCH value) and finally using cut we discard value after #.

Upvotes: 1

SLePort
SLePort

Reputation: 15461

You can use a temporary delimiter (ie |) to make AM/PM a column that can be used as a sort field :

$ cat sourcefile | sed 's/\(.\)M$/|\1M/' | sort -t"|" -k5 -k4 | sed 's/|\(.\)M/\1M/'
40|1|15|Mar 19 2016  2:30AM
20|1|124|Mar 19 2016  3:00AM
43|1|146|Mar 19 2016  5:30AM
42|1|158|Mar 19 2016  1:50PM
20|1|144|Mar 19 2016  2:00PM

Upvotes: 1

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