Is there a way to ignore header lines in a UNIX sort?

Question

I have a fixed-width-field file which I\'m trying to sort using the UNIX (Cygwin, in my case) sort utility.

The problem is there is a two-line header at the top of t

Answer 1

In simple cases, sed can do the job elegantly:

    your_script | (sed -u 1q; sort)

or equivalently,

    cat your_data | (sed -u 1q; sort)

The key is in the 1q -- print first line (header) and quit (leaving the rest of the input to sort).

For the example given, 2q will do the trick.

The -u switch (unbuffered) is required for those seds (notably, GNU's) that would otherwise read the input in chunks, thereby consuming data that you want to go through sort instead.