Sort CSV based on a certain column?

Question

I\'m sure I\'ve done this in the past and there is something small I\'m forgetting, but how can I sort a CSV file on a certain column? I\'m interested in answers with and wi

Answer 1

In the spirit of there always being another way to do it, bear in mind that plain old GNU sort might be enough.

$ sort -t, -k2 -n unsorted.txt
name,21,male
name,24,male
name,25,female
name,27,female

Where the command line args are:

-t, # use comma as the record separator
-k2 # sort on the second key (record) in the line
-n  # sort using numerical comparison (like using <=> instead of cmp in perl)

If you want a Perl solution, wrap it in qx() ;-)