I have a file with entries like the following:
female,9,13,6.3152956461
female,12,12,5.4797699786
female,11,11,3.6421699174
female,9,14,4.5933365997
female,8,14,2.4181574607
etc.
I first want to remove all but the first 2 columns, then separate them by a space instead of a comma. Ultimately though my problem is that I need to sort by column 1, then column 2 but I have to keep the pairing in a given row intact.
I believe that I need to use sed to switch the column deliminator and sort to do the sorting but I can't figure out how to keep the row pairings together between the 2 sorts.
Best Answer
You mean like this?
This will sort
,
-delimited data on the first field alphabetically, then on the second field numerically. The sorting will first sort using the first field, and for records that have identical first fields, the second field will be used for sorting.To remove the last few columns afterwards (or rather, keep columns 1 and 2):
To remove that comma too:
But this is not needed for the sorting, obviously, as you may tell
sort
what delimiter to use.