Sorting data based on second column of a file

You can use the key option of the sort command, which takes a “field number”, so if you wanted the second column:

sort -k2 -n yourfile

-n, --numeric-sort compare according to string numerical value

For example:

$ cat ages.txt 
Bob 12
Jane 48
Mark 3
Tashi 54

$ sort -k2 -n ages.txt 
Mark 3
Bob 12
Jane 48
Tashi 54

Related Posts:

  1. How do I pause my shell script for a second before continuing?
  2. In the shell, what does ” 2>&1 ” mean?
  3. In the shell, what does ” 2>&1 ” mean?
  4. How can I check if a directory exists in a Bash shell script?
  5. Which characters need to be escaped when using Bash?
  6. Variable interpolation in the shell
  7. Shell script not running, command not found
  8. Difference between sh and Bash
  9. How do I use a regex in a shell script?
  10. How to grep for case insensitive string in a file?
  11. Difference between wait and sleep
  12. Multi-line string with extra space (preserved indentation)
  13. Multi-line string with extra space (preserved indentation)
  14. ‘\r’: command not found – .bashrc / .bash_profile [duplicate]
  15. ‘\r’: command not found – .bashrc / .bash_profile [duplicate]
  16. How can I declare and use Boolean variables in a shell script?
  17. How to reload .bashrc settings without logging out and back in again?
  18. How can I declare and use Boolean variables in a shell script?
  19. How to reload .bash_profile from the command line?
  20. What is the purpose of “&&” in a shell command?
  21. Replace one substring for another string in shell script
  22. How can I count all the lines of code in a directory recursively?
  23. How can I kill a process by name instead of PID, on Linux?
  24. Given two directory trees, how can I find out which files differ by content?
  25. What is cp: cannot stat error in Unix, I get this error when trying to copy thing from one folder to another
  26. cp: missing destination file operand after
  27. Shell: How to call one shell script from another shell script?
  28. find: missing argument to -exec
  29. What is cp: cannot stat error in Unix, I get this error when trying to copy thing from one folder to another
  30. How to check if an environment variable exists and get its value?
  31. What is the difference between “#!/usr/bin/env bash” and “#!/usr/bin/bash”?
  32. How to convert a string to lower case in Bash?
  33. Create a new file in git bash
  34. How to specify the private SSH-key to use when executing shell command on Git?
  35. Speed up rsync with Simultaneous/Concurrent File Transfers?
  36. Multi-dimensional arrays in Bash
  37. What’s the meaning of the parameter -e for bash shell command line?
  38. zip error – Nothing to do
  39. Check existence of input argument in a Bash shell script
  40. Associative arrays in Shell scripts
  41. How to split one string into multiple strings separated by at least one space in bash shell?
  42. Copy multiple files from one directory to another from Linux shell
  43. source command not found in sh shell
  44. Integer expression expected error in shell script
  45. What is the difference between double and single square brackets in bash?
  46. How do I get the current Unix time in milliseconds in Bash?
  47. Cp: target is not a directory
  48. Extract substring in Bash
  49. Read a file line by line assigning the value to a variable
  50. How to decode Seagate’s hard drive date code in a Bash script
  51. -bash: syntax error near unexpected token `)’
  52. How do I parse command line arguments in Bash?
  53. How to make “if not true condition”?
  54. -bash: syntax error near unexpected token `newline’
  55. How do I iterate over a range of numbers defined by variables in Bash?
  56. Echo newline in Bash prints literal \n
  57. Bash script and /bin/bash^M: bad interpreter: No such file or directory [duplicate]
  58. Passing parameters to a Bash function
  59. How can I use “:” as an AWK field separator?
  60. “unary operator expected” error in Bash if condition
  61. “while :” vs. “while true” [duplicate]
  62. How do I split a string on a delimiter in Bash?
  63. How do I compare two string variables in an ‘if’ statement in Bash?
  64. How can I compare numbers in Bash?
  65. Extract file basename without path and extension in bash
  66. Shell script “for” loop syntax
  67. How can I get the source directory of a Bash script from within the script itself?
  68. BASH Syntax error near unexpected token ‘done’
  69. How can I match a string with a regex in Bash?
  70. Pseudo-terminal will not be allocated because stdin is not a terminal
  71. How to use gdb with pipes and stdin
  72. How to define hash tables in Bash?
  73. How to escape single quotes within single quoted strings
  74. ./configure : /bin/sh^M : bad interpreter
  75. Create timestamp variable in bash script
  76. How do I edit $PATH (.bash_profile) on OS X?
  77. Check number of arguments passed to a Bash script
  78. How to modify a global variable within a function in bash?
  79. Fast ping sweep in python
  80. Writing a simple shell in C using fork/execvp
  81. What does set -e mean in a bash script?
  82. What does set -e mean in a bash script?
  83. curl: no URL specified for restful api
  84. firebase-tools “-bash: firebase: command not found”
  85. Running bash script from within python
  86. How to run C program on Mac OS X using Terminal?
  87. Bash mkdir and subfolders 
  88. Linux Bash: Move multiple different files into same directory
  89. How to get the first line of a file in a bash script?
  90. How to open Emacs inside Bash
  91. How to parse XML in Bash?
  92. bash which OR operator to use – pipe v double pipe
  93. Timeout a command in bash without unnecessary delay
  94. How do I know the script file name in a Bash script?
  95. How to determine if a bash variable is empty?
  96. What is “-bash: !”: event not found”
  97. Colors in bash after piping through less?
  98. Can you have more than one ~/.ssh/config file?
  99. How to make bash scripts print out every command before it executes?
  100. What does passing the -xe parameters to /bin/bash do

Leave a Comment