z/OS V1R9.0 UNIX System Services Command ... - Christian Grothoff

Examples
which when preceded with +m[.n] is equivalent to:
–k m+1[.n+1],p.0[options]
if q is specified and is zero. Otherwise,
–k m+1[.n+1],p+1[.q][options]
For example:
+1.2 -3.5
defines a sorting key with a starting position that sort finds by skipping the first two
characters of the next field and an ending position that sort finds by skipping the
first three fields and then the first five characters of the next field. In other words,
the sorting key extends from the third character of the second field to the sixth
character of the fourth field. This is the same key as defined under the –k option,
described earlier.
With either syntax, if the end of a sorting key is not a valid position after the
beginning key position, the sorting key extends to the end of the input record.
You can specify multiple sort key positions by using several –k options or several +
and – options. In this case, sort uses the second sorting key only for records where
the first sorting keys are equal, the third sorting key only when the first two are
equal, and so on. If all key positions compare equal, sort determines ordering by
using the entire record.
When you specify the –u option to determine the uniqueness of output records,
sort looks only at the sorting keys, not the whole record. (Of course, if you specify
no sorting keys, sort considers the whole record to be the sorting key.)
1. To sort an input file having lines consisting of the day of the month, white space,
and the month, as in:
30 December
23 MAY
25 June
10 June
use the command:
sort -k 2M -k 1n
2. To merge two dictionaries, with one word per line:
sort –m –dfi dict1 dict2 >newdict
Environment Variable
sort uses the following environment variable:
File
TMPDIR
Contains the pathname of the directory to be used for temporary files.
sort uses the following file:
sort
/tmp/stm*
Temporary files used for merging and –o option. You can specify a different
directory for temporary files using the TMPDIR environment variable.
Chapter 2. Shell command descriptions 591