Sure you can, but that's not what your code does. If you want to sort column 16, you will first have to select the 16th column entirely, before you can sort it. So you would do:
  1. Open your input file.
  2. Read it, line by line. Extract column 16, push it to an array.
  3. Close your input file.
  4. Sort your array.
  5. Open your output file.
  6. Write your sorted array.
  7. Close your output file.
What you certainly can't do is reading the input one line at a time, writing something for each line, and then expect the entire thing to be sorted when you're done.

In reply to Re^3: useless use of sort??? by Anonymous Monk
in thread useless use of sort??? by drock

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