sort: 0653-657 A write error occurred while sorting.

Shell Programming and Scripting
1

Hi
I am trying to sort a file of 88075743B size. I am doing some processing on the file and after the processing is done; I get 2 files temp1 and temp2. I need to combine both these files as one and this final file should be sorted on fields 1 and 2. Space is the delimiter between fields. Record length of the file is 2105.

I am sorting on temp1 and then merging temp2 with that. The commands I am using are:

sort -n -t ' ' +0 -1 $temp1 | cat > $input_file
sort -m -n -t ' ' +0 -1 $temp2 $input_file > $sort_temp

I am getting the 2 temp files sorted individually but the final file ($sort_temp) is not sorted.

If I try sort command directly without any merge; I get this error:

sort: 0653-657 A write error occurred while sorting.

Could some one tell me where I am going wrong and what should be the correct command?

Thanks

2

Are you trying to write into the file directly that you are currently sorting?

Anyway please post a short excerpt of the input and desired output if help on sorting itself is needed too.

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3

Please state which IBM Operating System and version you have and which shell your are using. Can you post the output from "set" (removing anything private) and also state the free disc space in /tmp (or wherever you put temporary files).

---------- Post updated 10-16-09 at 13:59 ---------- Previous update was 10-15-09 at 22:27 ----------

Assuming you have a modern sort with "-k" parameters the whole process can be achieved in one sort:

sort -k 1n,1n -k 2n,2n ${temp1} ${temp2} > ${sort_temp}

If you have insufficient disc space for sort work files consider a "-T" parameter to "sort".