GROUP BY/SUM from shell

Question

I have a large file containing data like this:

a 23
b 8
a 22
b 1

I want to be able to get this:

a 45
b 9

Answer 1

One way using perl:

perl -ane '
    next unless @F == 2; 
    $h{ $F[0] } += $F[1]; 
    END { 
        printf qq[%s %d\n], $_, $h{ $_ } for sort keys %h;
    }
' infile

Content of infile:

a 23
b 8
a 22
b 1

Output:

a 45
b 9