[SOLVED] Table cell-only sorting in bash

Issue

I need to place cells of every 2nd and 3rd column in sorted order. Thus, I need to swap X[N][2] and X[N][3] if X[N][2] > X[N][3], where X - matrix, N - any natural number I have a table file like this:

A 9 1 2
B 8 7 F
C 2 4 X
D 3 1 1

I need to get this:

A 1 9 2
B 7 8 F
C 2 4 X
D 1 3 1

So line order remained the same, but some cells X[i][2] and X[i][3] got swapped.

I thought about using pipeline with xargs cut and sort but it doesn't seem to be a good idea. Any suggestions where to dig?

Solution

This can be solved with a small awk script:

# Swap X[N][2] and X[N][3] if X[N][2] > X[N][3]
$2 > $3 {
  tmp = $3
  $3 = $2
  $2 = tmp
}

# Print row
1

To use it in a script or shell as a one-liner: awk '$2 > $3 { tmp = $3; $3 = $2; $2 = tmp } 1' inputfile.txt

Answered By - shilch