Very Computer

John Gianni previously asked:

Quote:>Q: Any idea how to UNIX numerical 'sort' columns containing an exponent?

Given an electrical netlist.txt ASCII text file of the format:
      ...
      current in terminal "/I0/M76/D" is 2.01959e05
      current in terminal "/I0/I31/M0/D" is -5.156252e-05
      current in terminal "/I0/I2/I18/M0/D" is -0.0001061797
      current in terminal "/I0/I2/I18/M0/D" is 0.0001061797
      current in terminal "/I0/I2/M1/D" is -2.110877e06
      current in terminal "/I0/I2/M10/D" is 4.578272e-05
      ...

These methods have kindly been proposed to perform a numerical sort
(smallest to largest) on Sun Solaris 7 UNIX systems:
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1) sort -r -k 5.3n -k 5.1,5.1n netlist.txt

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2) awk '{printf "%s %s %s %s %s %10.15f\n",$1,$2,$3,$4,$5,$6}' netlist.txt \
   | sort -n +5

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3) sortNetlist.pl < netlist.txt
   Where sortNetlist.pl is:
     #!/usr/local/bin/perl

      (split(" ", $a))[5] <=> (split(" ", $b))[5]; } <STDIN>;

      print($line);
      }

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4) sortNet.pl < netlist.txt | sed -e 's/^ *//g'
  Where sortNet.pl is:
    #!/usr/local/bin/perl

    while (<>) {

        }

    # sort - force whitespace at beginning of each line, and the split
    # on whitespace. Take 6th field and numerically compare

    $a[6] <=>

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