Of course, there is a time in every datas life when it should really be loaded into a database instead..

I believe that actually merges the two columns as a single key, as opposed to using two keys (at least, thats the impression I get from the somewhat ambiguous man page). Thus, it would work fine if the two keys are next to each other (as they are in this case) and both strings. But for a numeric sort on column 1 and a string sort on column 2, you need to specify the keys independantly (-n -k 1 -k 2).

I have a list with three columns.

2 4 a ##end of row 1##
1 9 b ##end of row 2##
6 8 a ##end of row 3##
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6 8 a  ##end of row 1##
2 4 a  ##end of row 2##
1 9 b  ##end of row 3##
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Edit by dws to add <code> tags

Funny, I've just been working on something similar to this.

Your problem sounds perfect for the Sort::Fields module. It does reverse or numeric sorts on what ever columns you specify.

()-()
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I don't have the latest version of perl, is there any other way around this?

You want to sort the whole row as a string, then sort on the first column numerically, correct?

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;

my @sorted = map {$_->[0]} sort {
    $a->[0] cmp $b->[0] ||
    $b->[1] <=> $a->[1]
} map {[ $_ ,/(\w+)\s+(\w+)\s+(\w+)/]} <DATA>   ;
print  for @sorted;
    

__END__
2 4 a
1 9 b
6 8 a
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UPDATED

My mistake- I thought you were asking a perl perlfunc:sort question, rather than Gnu sort. (I also didn't realize that this was a mid-thread revision of the subj. line .). For a perl question, then you would be looking for...

my @sorted = map {$_->[0]} sort {
    $a->[3] cmp $b->[3] || # sorted ascending alpha on col 3
    $b->[2] <=> $a->[2]    # then sorted reverse num on col 2
} map {[ $_ ,/(\w+)\s+(\w+)\s+(\w+)/]} <DATA>   ;

print  for @sorted;
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(I think..)
UPDATED2
Gnu sort's index starts with 0. The last column would be "2" not "3". Does this help, rchou2?
mkmcconn

no, i have a file with the three columns, and i want to sort first based on the last column and then sort the second column numerically......and i need to sort the file....i tried using sort -k 3 -n -r -k 2 filein -o fileout but it didn' get the results i expected