Passing an array to sort in BASH

Question

Say I have an array consisting of lines such as:

arr[0] = 20160330        asdsa 24 asdsa 3 3000 054217542 30.3.2016
arr[1] = 20140102        asdsadsa 25 asdsadsaa 5 4500 534215365 2.1.2014
arr[2] = 20160306        dsasda 23 dsada 4 3200 537358234 6.3.2016

I now want to sort them by the first column, and print the them in the sorted order:

20140102        asdsadsa 25 asdsadsaa 5 4500 534215365 2.1.2014
20160306        dsasda 23 dsada 4 3200 537358234 6.3.2016
20160330        asdsa 24 asdsa 3 3000 054217542 30.3.2016

How do I use sort on an array?

John1024 · Accepted Answer · 2016-05-22 00:36:28Z

2

If you are sure that none of the array elements contain newline characters, then try:

$ printf "%s\n" "${arr[@]}" | sort -nk1,1
20140102        asdsadsa 25 asdsadsaa 5 4500 534215365 2.1.2014
20160306        dsasda 23 dsada 4 3200 537358234 6.3.2016
20160330        asdsa 24 asdsa 3 3000 054217542 30.3.2016

Sorting and then removing the first number

Using cut:

$ printf "%s\n" "${arr[@]}" | sort -nk1,1 | cut -d" " -f2-
       asdsadsa 25 asdsadsaa 5 4500 534215365 2.1.2014
       dsasda 23 dsada 4 3200 537358234 6.3.2016
       asdsa 24 asdsa 3 3000 054217542 30.3.2016

Using sed:

$ printf "%s\n" "${arr[@]}" | sort -nk1,1 | sed 's/[[:digit:]]*[[:space:]]*//'
asdsadsa 25 asdsadsaa 5 4500 534215365 2.1.2014
dsasda 23 dsada 4 3200 537358234 6.3.2016
asdsa 24 asdsa 3 3000 054217542 30.3.2016

edited May 22, 2016 at 0:36

answered May 22, 2016 at 0:28

John1024

115k15 gold badges152 silver badges183 bronze badges

Sign up to request clarification or add additional context in comments.

3 Comments

LamaEu Over a year ago

Is it only possible to cut the first numbers so that the lines would start as: asdsadsa 25 asdsadsaa 5 4500 534215365 2.1.2014, etc..

John1024 Over a year ago

@LamaEu Yes, I just added two methods for removing the leading number.

LamaEu Over a year ago

Hey, John. This doens't seem to work.` $ printf "%s\n" "${arr[@]}" | sort -nk1,1 | cut -d" " -f2-` did not cut the first column.

anubhava · Accepted Answer · 2016-05-22 00:29:29Z

1

You can use process substitution with printf:

sort -nk1 <(printf "%s\n" "${arr[@]}")

20140102        asdsadsa 25 asdsadsaa 5 4500 534215365 2.1.2014
20160306        dsasda 23 dsada 4 3200 537358234 6.3.2016
20160330        asdsa 24 asdsa 3 3000 054217542 30.3.2016

answered May 22, 2016 at 0:29

anubhava

790k67 gold badges603 silver badges671 bronze badges

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

Passing an array to sort in BASH

2 Answers 2

Sorting and then removing the first number

3 Comments

Comments

Your Answer

Hot Network Questions

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

2 Answers 2

Sorting and then removing the first number

3 Comments

Comments

Your Answer

Sign up or log in

Post as a guest

Related