how to sort a file with multi-character delimiter using linux shell sort?

Question

I have a file, its delimiter is "|||".

abc|||123|||999|||5|||Just for you | Jim|||20
cef|||7|||210|||6|||Go away | R&B|||30
mmm|||89|||320|||16|||Traveling Light|George Winston|||21

The delimiter "|||" can't be replace with "|" or "||", because data itself may contain "|" or "||".

Could someone tell me how to sort column 2 with delimiter "|||" ?

The following method fails:

sort -t$'|||' -nrk2 a.txt > b.txt
sort: multi-character tab `|||'

Thank you!

you could swap the columns and then use sort -n for the whole file without specifying a delimiter — m13r
– m13r, Commented Apr 19, 2017 at 6:43
@m13r You method doesn't work. The above a.txt is just a simple example. Real file contains many digital columns, and I must sort at least 2 digital columns, just like sort -t$'|||' -nrk2 -k3,rn -k4,rn a.txt > b.txt — Terry
– Terry, Commented Apr 19, 2017 at 11:19
When you say that it fails, what happens? Does sort fail to run, or does it just produce incorrect output? If it fails to run, what error message do you get? If the output is incorrect, what output do you get? Show an example of the output you get, and what you expect. — Jim Mischel
– Jim Mischel, Commented Apr 19, 2017 at 14:51

m13r · Accepted Answer · 2022-02-12 13:06:59Z

1

You could change the delimiter to | then sort it with sort and then change everything back:

# change | to __BAR__ writing the result to b.txt
sed 's@\([^|]\)|\([^|]\)@\1__BAR__\2@g' a.txt > b.txt
# change ||| to | in b.txt
sed -i 's@|||@|@g' b.txt

# do sorting with | delimiter writing the result to c.txt
sort -t$'|' -nrk2 -k3,rn -k4,rn b.txt > c.txt 

# change everything back in c.txt:
# | to |||
sed -i 's@|@|||@g' c.txt
# __BAR__ to |
sed -i 's@__BAR__@|@g' c.txt

edited Feb 12, 2022 at 13:06

answered Apr 19, 2017 at 14:19

m13r

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1 Comment

Chris Over a year ago

I bet this works for most folks, but my problem is that I'm using a multi-character delimiter in the first place because that's the only way to avoid confusing a delimiter content.

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