inkel/bsort

Like sort(1) but keeping the first line as headers.

bsort - like sort but keep the first line as header

I use sort almost daily at work, but I always hated that if I want to sort something that has a header, the header gets sorted as well. Thus, bsort was born.

It is a very simple program: you can only use it by piping to it and only the first line is considered as the header.

Usage

bsort only works by reading from stdin and then sub-executing the regular sort on all the lines but the first one. It doesn't have any parameters of its own, so any additional parameters will be sent to sort.

If you want to sort one file then you can do:

< path/to/file.txt bsort

If you want to reverse sort a file by the fourth column in a numerical fashion, you can do:

< path/to/file.txt bsort -rnk4

If you want to sort many files:

cat path/to/file1.txt path/to/file2.txt | bsort

Given that parameters are pass as they are to sort you could very well say hey, I'm going to do bsort -r file instead of piping to it: nothing stops you of doing that, but it will fail. You have been warned.

Installation

If you have a running Go environment, just do

go install github.com/inkel/bsort

If you prefer instead downloading precompiled binaries, you can find them in the releases section. Just download the version you're looking for, place it in your $PATH and make it executable. Enjoy!

Example

Consider having the following:

$ cat example.txt
host        ip          heap.percent ram.percent load node.role master name
10.0.22.28  10.0.22.28            11          74 0.00 -         m      es-iot-master-4
10.0.12.201 10.0.12.201           45          73 0.00 -         m      es-iot-master-3
10.0.12.4   10.0.12.4             12          74 0.00 -         m      es-iot-master-0
10.0.32.71  10.0.32.71            69          74 1.01 -         *      es-iot-master-2
10.0.22.22  10.0.22.22            53          73 0.07 -         m      es-iot-master-1
10.0.32.29  10.0.32.29            13          73 0.00 -         m      es-iot-master-5

If we want to sort by name we can do:

$ < example.txt bsort -k8
host        ip          heap.percent ram.percent load node.role master name
10.0.12.4   10.0.12.4             12          74 0.00 -         m      es-iot-master-0
10.0.22.22  10.0.22.22            53          73 0.07 -         m      es-iot-master-1
10.0.32.71  10.0.32.71            69          74 1.01 -         *      es-iot-master-2
10.0.12.201 10.0.12.201           45          73 0.00 -         m      es-iot-master-3
10.0.22.28  10.0.22.28            11          74 0.00 -         m      es-iot-master-4
10.0.32.29  10.0.32.29            13          73 0.00 -         m      es-iot-master-5

If we wanted to do the same with the regular sort utility, this would be the result:

$ < example.txt sort -k8
10.0.12.4   10.0.12.4             12          74 0.00 -         m      es-iot-master-0
10.0.22.22  10.0.22.22            53          73 0.07 -         m      es-iot-master-1
10.0.32.71  10.0.32.71            69          74 1.01 -         *      es-iot-master-2
10.0.12.201 10.0.12.201           45          73 0.00 -         m      es-iot-master-3
10.0.22.28  10.0.22.28            11          74 0.00 -         m      es-iot-master-4
10.0.32.29  10.0.32.29            13          73 0.00 -         m      es-iot-master-5
host        ip          heap.percent ram.percent load node.role master name

Not cool.

Why the name?

Because @fsaravia is smarter than me and he pointed out that this utility sorts the body of a file.

License

See LICENSE.