Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!jpl-devvax!lwall
From: lwall@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV (Larry Wall)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: Shell Programming Question - sort
Keywords: sort, reverse, awk
Message-ID: <7338@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV>
Date: 8 Mar 90 02:42:18 GMT
References: <751@ncs.dnd.ca> <3190@hcx1.SSD.CSD.HARRIS.COM>
Reply-To: lwall@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV (Larry Wall)
Organization: Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA
Lines: 22

In article <3190@hcx1.SSD.CSD.HARRIS.COM> brad@SSD.CSD.HARRIS.COM (Brad Appleton) writes:
: I believe that BSD Unix should have a command called "reverse" which
: reverses the characters in each line of a file. Run your file through
: reverse, then sort, then back through reverse (this may not work 
: depending upon how fancy a sort you need to do).
: 
: 	reverse file | sort [options] | reverse [-] > outfile

Kinda hard to sort on a numeric field that way tho, which I think he
wanted...

: Just in case you dont have reverse... It is easy to write!

It's even easier than a 97 line C program:

    perl -ne 'chop; print reverse "\n", split(//);'

But probably not as efficient.  Especially if you include the time to
install perl.   :-)

Larry Wall
lwall@jpl-devvax.jpl.nasa.gov