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Listing the available patches in openSUSE results in the following output.

The command that results int the details below is zypper patches. The same result is also displayed when running the command zypper list-patches -a

Loading repository data... Reading installed packages... Repository | Name | Category | Severity | Interactive | Status | Summary ----------------------------------+--------------------+-------------+-----------+-------------+------------+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- openSUSE-Leap-15.0-Update | openSUSE-2018-1000 | recommended | moderate | --- | not needed | Recommended update for gnuhealth, proteus, tryton, trytond, trytond_purchase, trytond_stock_supply openSUSE-Leap-15.0-Update | openSUSE-2018-1004 | security | low | --- | not needed | Security update for ffmpeg-4 openSUSE-Leap-15.0-Update | openSUSE-2018-1005 | security | moderate | --- | not needed | Security update for chromium openSUSE-Leap-15.0-Update | openSUSE-2018-1006 | security | moderate | --- | applied | Security update for okular openSUSE-Leap-15.0-Update | openSUSE-2018-1007 | recommended | moderate | --- | applied | Recommended update for tigervnc

In an attempt to sort "Status" using the command sort -k 6,6 listing.txt | less for example yields the following output. 

----------------------------------+--------------------+-------------+-----------+-------------+------------+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Loading repository data... Reading installed packages... openSUSE-Leap-15.0-Update-Non-Oss | openSUSE-2018-1082 | recommended | moderate | --- | not needed | Security update for opera openSUSE-Leap-15.0-Update-Non-Oss | openSUSE-2018-1240 | recommended | moderate | --- | not needed | Recommended update for opera openSUSE-Leap-15.0-Update-Non-Oss | openSUSE-2018-1294 | recommended | low | --- | not needed | Recommended update for Regina-REXX, THE, ooRexx openSUSE-Leap-15.0-Update | openSUSE-2018-1000 | recommended | moderate | --- | not needed | Recommended update for gnuhealth, proteus, tryton, trytond, trytond_purchase, trytond_stock_supply openSUSE-Leap-15.0-Update | openSUSE-2018-1007 | recommended | moderate | --- | applied | Recommended update for tigervnc Repository | Name | Category | Severity | Interactive | Status | Summary

In checking if the delimiter is a combination of spaces and tabs using the syntax highlighting rules in vim, it returns only spaces. 

:syntax on :set syntax=whitespace

enter image description here

It seems that the file may using multiple delimiters.

  • What is the most effective way of determining the delimiters in use?
  • What would be the best and simplest way to sort the columns based on the delimiters in use?
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  • @JeffSchaller - I updated the question with the commands that return the output. Commented Jan 20, 2019 at 17:34

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
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This should do, unless you want to keep the header in place:

tail -n +5 listing.txt | sort -b -k6 -t'|'

You can omit the -b option of sort ("ignore leading blanks) if the file is using white space regularly (ie. it doesn't mix | applied and | applied).

But I guess that a) that program probably has some options to tweak its format into something more machine-readable b) you'll be better off with just eg. awk -F'|' '$6~/not needed/' instead of sort.

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  • It's probably best not to assume there are 5 patches every single time. Commented Jan 20, 2019 at 17:18
  • @NikoGambt tail +5 is not the same as tail -5 Commented Jan 20, 2019 at 17:22
  • Ah, my mistake. Commented Jan 20, 2019 at 17:26
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    @Motivated corrected to a standard-compliant tail syntax. You can also use sed -n '5,$p' instead of tail -n +5. If you're using sort -k6,6 without a -t option, it will consider the 3rd | as the 6th field. Commented Jan 20, 2019 at 17:42
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    @Motivated You don't have to distinguish between spaces and tabs; the -b option of sort should cause it to ignore any leading blanks in the selected field(s), no matter if they're spaces or tabs. If you're concerned about the file containing nulls and other non-printable chars, you could check it with hexdump ;-) Commented Jan 20, 2019 at 17:54
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You could use this:

awk 'NR<=4 {print $0; next } { print $0 | "sort -k6,6 -t\\|" }' listing.txt

It runs awk on listing.txt; instead you could pipe the data into awk (leaving out the listing.txt at the end, of course). The awk-script prints the first four header lines as they are. The rest of the lines is piped into sort. Sort sorts the 6th column, identifying it using a delimiter equal to the pipe symbol.

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