How to use sort and awk command to sort dates in the 4th column of a file-CodePudding

I have the following file called st.txt:

Item    Type    Amount  Date
Petrol  expense -160    2020-01-23
Electricity expense -200    2020-03-24
Electricity expense -200    2020-04-24
Trim line   expense -50 2020-05-30
Martha Burns    income  150 2021-03-11
Highbury shops  income  300 2021-03-14

I want to sort the data by date and print all data except the first line. The following command works:

awk -F '\t' 'NR>1{print $4"\t"$1"\t"$2"\t"$3}' st.txt | sort -t"-" -n -k1 -k2 -k3

The output then is:

2020-01-23  Petrol  expense -160
2020-03-24  Electricity expense -200
2020-04-24  Electricity expense -200
2020-05-30  Trim line   expense -50
2021-03-11  Martha Burns    income  150
2021-03-14  Highbury shops  income  300

How can I write this command so I do not have to rearrange the columns so the date field remains at $4? I tried the following but it does not work:

awk -F '\t' 'NR>1{print $0}' st.txt | sort -t"-" -n -k 4,1 -k 4,2 -k 4,3

The dates are not sorted with this command.

The output should be:

Petrol expense  -160    2020-01-23
Electricity expense -200    2020-03-24
Electricity expense -200    2020-04-24
Trim line   expense -500    2020-05-30
Martha Burns    income      150 2021-03-11
Highbury shops  income      300 2021-03-14

CodePudding user response：

With GNU awk:

awk -F '\t' 'NR>1{a[$4]=$0} END{PROCINFO["sorted_in"] = "@ind_str_asc"; for(i in a){print a[i]}}' file

Output:

Petrol  expense -160    2020-01-23
Electricity     expense -200    2020-03-24
Electricity     expense -200    2020-04-24
Trim line       expense -50     2020-05-30
Martha Burns    income  150     2021-03-11
Highbury shops  income  300     2021-03-14

CodePudding user response：

Assuming the fields in your input file are tab-separated as your code suggests they are:

$ tail -n  2 file | sort -t$'\t' -k4
Petrol  expense -160    2020-01-23
Electricity     expense -200    2020-03-24
Electricity     expense -200    2020-04-24
Trim line       expense -50     2020-05-30
Martha Burns    income  150     2021-03-11
Highbury shops  income  300     2021-03-14