hi I just ran into either a bug or more certainly an error from me. I am trying to sort a file that has 5 column by three specific column.
I am using -k option.
sort -k1,1 -k3,3 -k4,4 < abundance_key_60.tsv
SO90 TARA_031_SRF M00370 0.0004796352593680699 5380.716788521779
SO90 TARA_072_MES M00370 6.704622779795495 889.5003464019538
WDU TARA_072_MES M00165 0.00010342611234558623 1372.1512123790574
WDU TARA_046_SRF M00165 0.00011353279569781544 582.9204804414709
WDU TARA_025_DCM M00165 0.00028966684296873025 2486.7113286682593
Everything work fine then I realised one of my column is numeric and I add the -g option for this column. At this point sort seems to only filter by this column :
sort -k1,1 -k3,3 -gk4,4 < test_.sort.txt
SO90 TARA_031_SRF M00370 0.0004796352593680699 5380.716788521779
WDU TARA_025_DCM M00165 0.00028966684296873025 2486.7113286682593
WDU TARA_046_SRF M00165 0.00011353279569781544 582.9204804414709
WDU TARA_072_MES M00165 0.00010342611234558623 1372.1512123790574
SO90 TARA_072_MES M00370 6.704622779795495 889.5003464019538
I try to use -s option but I did not change the results. any help appreciated!
ps: this is sample from my file that reproduce the bug.
I am on ubuntu 16.04 with default bash and sort for this distribution.
You want to specify the g only for -k4,4, like this:
bash$ sort -k1,1 -k3,3 -k4,4g test_.sort.txt
SO90 TARA_031_SRF M00370 0.0004796352593680699 5380.716788521779
SO90 TARA_072_MES M00370 6.704622779795495 889.5003464019538
WDU TARA_072_MES M00165 0.00010342611234558623 1372.1512123790574
WDU TARA_046_SRF M00165 0.00011353279569781544 582.9204804414709
WDU TARA_025_DCM M00165 0.00028966684296873025 2486.7113286682593
(Experimentally verified by changing the number to 6.704622779795495E-10 and observing how that changes the sort order. A better test case would contain samples which trivially reveal when you get the correct result.)