Sort by numbers, then alphabetically

Shell Programming and Scripting
1

Hey guys, I have a file that contains the following:

366 K
364 Q
12 UB
7 INC. P
4 Law
2 LAMB
2 High
1 QEG
1 OF
1 LC
1 B

As you can see, it's already sorted by numerical order, how do I sort it again, breaking the ties by using the alphabetical order of the second column, but keeping the numerical order of the first column?

2

Hello, Andrew9191:

For future reference, it's best to give a sample of the desired output as well. As I understand it, you want the first column compared numericallly and sorted in reverse order and lines that compare equal in that sense are to then be sorted in increasing order alphabetically. The following sort command accomplishes this:

$ sort -k1,1nr -k2 data
366 K
364 Q
12 UB
7 INC. P
4 Law
2 High
2 LAMB
1 B
1 LC
1 OF
1 QEG

Regards,
Alister

3

Thanks very much