I have a file with the structure below. I want to order its lines by the second column defined by double points on bash, but I do not even know how to start. Would you be nice to help me order it?

input.txt

a:3:foo
b:1:bar
c:2:goo

output.txt

b:1:bar
c:2:goo
a:3:foo

CodePudding user response：

With sort

sort -nk2 -t: input.txt

Redirect the output to the new file.

sort -nk2 -t: input.txt > output.txt

See man sort