I'm not seeeing the pattern in your output, but if you're looking to sort "by conversation", you'll need to come up with a function that can take a given record and give back a unique key for "a conversation". That's the first hurdle. After that, it'll be a matter of running the right sorts on that, and perhaps subsorts within the sort.

As an idea for a "conversation", presuming you mean "packets that go either way between host:port X and host:port Y", you could develop a signature for the conversation by sorting the host:port so that the lower host:port is always to the left, and then the signature is the concatenation of the two. For example, packets from 10.1:8000 to 10.2:5000 as well as packets from 10.2:5000 to 10.1:8000 would both be labeled as "10.1:8000-10.2:5000" in the signature of the conversation, by sorting the two hosts so that the lower host/port is to the left.

-- Randal L. Schwartz, Perl hacker
Be sure to read my standard disclaimer if this is a reply.

In reply to Re: Sorting out troubles with advanced-ish sort by merlyn
in thread Sorting out troubles with advanced-ish sort by chargrill

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