{"id":11835,"date":"2015-01-21T05:08:40","date_gmt":"2015-01-20T18:08:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rjmprogramming.com.au\/wordpress\/?p=11835"},"modified":"2015-01-21T05:08:40","modified_gmt":"2015-01-20T18:08:40","slug":"windows-command-line-sort-tutorial","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rjmprogramming.com.au\/ITblog\/windows-command-line-sort-tutorial\/","title":{"rendered":"Windows Command Line sort Tutorial"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Windows<\/a>

Windows Command Line sort Tutorial<\/p><\/div>\n

If you were to nominate the most frequent “chore” you set your “software programs” to do, and we should never forget we are here to make software that achieves something, there is a big chance you’d choose the job of sort<\/i>ing data. The why<\/i> I guess relates to how a lot of we humans want data presented … we seek order … and are generally a bit afraid of chaos … whether this is good always is for 56784533 other conversations to have.<\/p>\n

Let’s go back to a thinking close to the operating system of interest … and today that is Windows (remember when we covered Linux sort Tutorial<\/a> as shown below?) … specifically its command line, and only its command line … in the old days called DOS or (MS-DOS) … we set ourselves the task not to compile anything … just straight DOS batch … and look at some command line Windows Command Line that will work on most\/all Windows operating systems … it is pretty fundamental stuff, and we use the same CSV input data file as for the tutorial below so that you can compare and contrast.<\/p>\n

The base command of interest may amaze you … are you ready …<\/p>\n


\nsort<\/a> [inputFile]
\n<\/code><\/p>\n

… gasp … but sort<\/i> just like that (without switches) assumes …<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. alphabetical sorting (okay as switch in Linux sort but not in DOS sort, as a switch)<\/li>\n
  2. total record sorting (in DOS sort can have a character position to start at as a switch, but this seldom suits CSV sorting) (as if all the characters on a carriage return\/line feed delimited<\/a> string)<\/li>\n
  3. ascending sort (from least to greatest) (in DOS there is a “\/r” switch (for reverse sort) available)<\/li>\n
  4. the sort determination looks from the leftmost character and proceeds to the right<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    … but, today, with our piped<\/a> sort<\/i> commands we present switches that can work with the first three defaults, respectively, the first two of which we have to tailor some DOS Batch programming code …<\/p>\n