How to sort the data file like this.

   2  4    3.25025E-03
   3  2    3.33731E-03
   4  6    3.32962E-03
   5  9    3.21431E-03
   6  4    3.15137E-03
   7  1    3.19278E-03
   8  4    3.36131E-03
   9  2    3.48622E-03
   10  5   3.42362E-03
   11  4    3.22574E-03
   1  11    3.41709E-03
   2  15    3.68377E-03
   3  7     3.86876E-03
   4  14    3.89766E-03
   5  9     3.74598E-03
   6  14    3.57971E-03
   7  16    3.51235E-03
   8  14    3.02648E-03
   9  21    2.45176E-03
   10 12    2.22753E-03

   ..  .... . .........
   ..   ... . .........

   17  11    2.13257E-03
   1  6    3.36285E-03
   2  6    3.49023E-03

   such that it looks like this

    1  1   3.4234E-03
    1  2   3.7565E-03
    1  3   4.6656E-03
    .. ..  ..........

    5  1   4.6464E-03
    5  2   2.7576E-03
    .. .. ...........

    20 1   3.4058E-03
    20 2   3.0563E-03

    Please help me with your kind suggestions

   Raj
   Bangalore
   India.

    "man sort" for more information.

--
    Chris F.A. Johnson                        http://cfaj.freeshell.org
    ===================================================================
    My code (if any) in this post is copyright 2002, Chris F.A. Johnson
    and may be copied under the terms of the GNU General Public License

jen

You could use external unix or unix-like MsDos/NT 'sort' (e.g. GNU sort or
Mks Toolkit):

cat file_name | sort - k 1,1n -k 2,2n

or write (or copy) example of internal sort in Awk (read all file in arrays
and sort inside Awk program).

Regards,
-Joseph

Stepan

doh  *grin*  It's because I've recently been bitten by the
-n not sorting gawk numberic output (which likes E output for
large numbers)

the linux (gnu) sort -g feature was much appreciated in those cases
(after we had figured why some of the largest companies in australia
were down in the groups with the tiny ones :(

Good Call...
Jen