I'm trying to sort within a line of input over an unknown number of fields:
Input:
ab bc
bc ab
cd ef bc
bc cd ef
cd bc ab
ef ab bc cd gh
Output:
ab bc
ab bc
bc cd ef
bc cd ef
ab cb cd
ab bc cd ef gh
I've been using something like awk '{if($2 < $1) print $2,$1;else print}' but seems like it would get messy over more than two fields. Any help?
One way using perl:
perl -lane 'printf qq[%s\n], join q[ ], sort @F' infile
Output:
ab bc
ab bc
bc cd ef
bc cd ef
ab bc cd
ab bc cd ef gh
-l, you don't need to print a newline. print join " ", sort @F will suffice.
One way using GNU awk:
awk '{
split($0, arr);
asort(arr);
for (i=1; i<=length(arr); i++) {
printf "%s ", arr[i] };
printf RS
}
' infile
Output:
ab bc
ab bc
bc cd ef
bc cd ef
ab bc cd
ab bc cd ef gh
Here is another perl solution, similar to @Birei's answer but more concise:
$ perl -anle 'print "@{[sort @F]}"' file
ab bc
ab bc
bc cd ef
bc cd ef
ab bc cd
ab bc cd ef gh
In shell script :
while read n
do
echo $(echo $n | tr " " "\n" | sort )
done < infile
(That forks too much, prefere the perl or gnu awk solution)
