RE: comm command bug while using with Tilda delimited files

[Anand Ramamoorthy]

Thanks Brian for a quick response. Infact I do sort the file prior to 
processing it. But I use the following:
 
sort -t"~" -k1,1 file1 -o file1
 
And I get the output mentioned below since 5 comes before 55. I'm purposely not 
using Numeric sort as I'm writing a generic script and my primary fields can be 
non-numeric fields as well.
 
Looks like I will have to settle for a normal sort rather than key based sort 
for this to work.
 
Thanks,
Anand

________________________________

From: Brian Dessent [mailto:address@hidden
Sent: Thu 25/05/2006 11:51 PM
To: Anand Ramamoorthy
Cc: address@hidden
Subject: Re: comm command bug while using with Tilda delimited files



Anand Ramamoorthy wrote:

> This is the first time I'm having issues with "comm" command on an HP-UX Unix 
> box (Model: 9000/800, Release: B11.11)
>
> I'm trying to compare two files that are "~" delimited.
>
> File 1
> --------
> 1~10
> 5~30
> 55~40
> 6~20
>
>
> File 2
> --------
> 1~20
> 5~35
> 55~40
> 7~27

'comm' requires that the input files be sorted.  These are not sorted,
because "~" comes after "5" in the ascii order.  You can test this for
yourself with something like:

$ echo -e "5~30\n55~40" | sort
55~40
5~30

It works when you use "," because that character comes before the digits
in the ascii order.  Run your input files through 'sort' before passing
them to 'comm'.

Brian



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