Reputation: 113
If I have the command
ps | sort -k 3,3 | tail -n 5
How is this find the 5 most CPU intensive processes?
I get that it is taking all the processes, sorting them based on a column through the -k option, but what does 3,3 mean?
Upvotes: 0
Views: 62
Reputation: 352
You could read what you seek for from the official manual of sort
(info sort
in linux); in particular, you are interested in the following extracts:
‘-k POS1[,POS2]’ ‘--key=POS1[,POS2]’ Specify a sort field that consists of the part of the line between POS1 and POS2 (or the end of the line, if POS2 is omitted), _inclusive_.
and, skipping a few paragraphs,
Example: To sort on the second field, use ‘--key=2,2’ (‘-k 2,2’). See below for more notes on keys and more examples. See also the ‘--debug’ option to help determine the part of the line being used in the sort.
So, basically, 3,3 emphasises that only the third column shall be considered for sorting, and the others will be ignored.
Upvotes: 1