Sort File using Shell Command

Question

I have the data look like this

$ cat file
(71149, 3079, 68070, 0.0433) Alex
(51135, 2881, 48254, 0.0563) Brandon
(27231, 7105, 20126, 0.2609) Chad
(8365, 3634, 4731, 0.4344) Daniel
(7490, 7346, 144, 0.9808) Eliz
(6841, 3917, 2924, 0.5726) Frank
(6740, 7393, -653, 1.0969) Gates
(5084, 500, 4584, 0.0983) Harry
(5044, 3913, 1131, 0.7758) Ian
(4760, 699, 4061, 0.1468) Jack
....

I want to sort the content by the last element in the bracket, how can i do it in command line.

$ cat file | ... magic ... 
(6740, 7393, -653, 1.0969) Gates
(7490, 7346, 144, 0.9808) Eliz
(5044, 3913, 1131, 0.7758) Ian
(6841, 3917, 2924, 0.5726) Frank
(8365, 3634, 4731, 0.4344) Daniel
(27231, 7105, 20126, 0.2609) Chad
(4760, 699, 4061, 0.1468) Jack
(5084, 500, 4584, 0.0983) Harry
(51135, 2881, 48254, 0.0563) Brandon
(71149, 3079, 68070, 0.0433) Alex
....

I succeeded in sorting the number but I don't know how to print the whole line in awk.

$cat file | sed 's/)//g' | awk 'BEGIN{FS=" "}{print $4}' | sort -r
5.1246
4.3936
2.7811
2.5
1.9
....

Kent · Accepted Answer · 2013-09-06 22:25:48Z

5

kent$  sort  -k4nr file
(6740, 7393, -653, 1.0969) Gates
(7490, 7346, 144, 0.9808) Eliz
(5044, 3913, 1131, 0.7758) Ian
(6841, 3917, 2924, 0.5726) Frank
(8365, 3634, 4731, 0.4344) Daniel
(27231, 7105, 20126, 0.2609) Chad
(4760, 699, 4061, 0.1468) Jack
(5084, 500, 4584, 0.0983) Harry
(51135, 2881, 48254, 0.0563) Brandon
(71149, 3079, 68070, 0.0433) Alex

answered Sep 6, 2013 at 22:25

Kent

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3 Comments

B.Mr.W. Over a year ago

the default field separator should be white space right? then the fourth element is actually "1.0969)" which include the brackets... you can still sort even with weird characters in the field?

Sammitch Over a year ago

@B.Mr.W. so long as there are always 4 decimal places in that column it should work fine.

Sammitch Over a year ago

@B.Mr.W. Well a more consistent sort would be cat file | tr -d '(),' | sort -k4nr if you're more interested in simply viewing the results and the particular output formatting isn't important.

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