CSV File - Sort data by second field

deppeler

How do I sort the contents of a flat file based on the second field?
What I have now sorts by the first field - 0

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open (BASE, $dbk) || do {&no_open;};

@sorted = sort(<BASE>);

foreach $pair (@sorted) {

    @show = split(/,/, $pair);
 
    close(BASE);

My fields are:
[0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11]

many thanks
Paul

deppeler

I also tried this...

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open (BASE, $db) || do {&no_open;};

print BASE "$snumber,$kit,$id,$item_name,$in_out,$itemd_name,$date_out,$date_in,$name_out,$staff_out,$staff_in";

@sorted = <BASE>;
 
foreach $line (sort secondfield @sorted) {

    @show = split(/,/,"$line");

    sub secondfield {

        ($snumber,$kit,$id,$item_name,$in_out,$itemd_name,$date_out,$date_in,$name_out,$staff_out,$staff_in)= split(/,/,$a);

        ($snumber2,$kit2,$id2,$item_name2,$in_out2,$itemd_name2,$date_out2,$date_in2,$name_out2,$staff_out2,$staff_in2)= split(/,/,$b);

        return ($kit2 <=> $kit);

    }

    $show[0] etc
 
    close (BASE);

}

but it still sorts by the first field.

thanks

miller

You must first parse the contents of your file so that perl can do the sorting on the field. There is no magic available here. You must program it all

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my @data;

open(BASE, $db) or die "Can't open $db: $!";

while (<BASE>) {

    chomp;

    push @data, [split ',', $_];

}

And then you can sort. The sort documentation itself will tell you how to do this.

http://perldoc.perl.org/functions/sort.html

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my @sorted = sort {$a->[1] <=> $b->[1]} @data;

- Miller

numberwhun

Its so funny, but that is exactly what I was thinking and working on for him, I just got caught up in work coding. Thanks for that confirmation Miller!

Jeff

deppeler

Great!...thanks a heap

KevinADC

Quote:

Originally Posted by miller

You must first parse the contents of your file so that perl can do the sorting on the field. There is no magic available here. You must program it all

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my @data;

open(BASE, $db) or die "Can't open $db: $!";

while (<BASE>) {

    chomp;

    push @data, [split ',', $_]

}

And then you can sort. The sort documentation itself will tell you how to do this.

http://perldoc.perl.org/functions/sort.html

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my @sorted = sort {$a->[1] <=> $b->[1]} @data;

- Miller

There is a module or two that will handle the backend stuff of sorting mixed data in delimited fields. But really it seems so much easier to just write your own sorting function than to use a module unless a person just can't grasp how the sort() function works.

miller

It doesn't surprise me that there would be such modules. Any ones in particular you were thinking of?

I also considered using Text::CSV_XS just to demonstrate how one would, but it felt like overkill given the data as he expressed it. Must better to just focus the problem at sorting complex data structures.

- Miller