using -t option with unix sort ?

[Daniel Malaby]

Nelis Lamprecht wrote:
> On 7/14/05, Nelis Lamprecht <nlamprecht at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>>On 7/14/05, Daniel Malaby <dan at malaby.com> wrote:
>>
>>>Hi All,
>>>
>>>I am trying to sort a tab delimited file with sort. The problem I am
>>>having is with the -t option. I do not know how to pass a tab.
>>
>><snip>
>>
>>>sort -t \t
>>
>></snip>
>>
>>>Any suggestions would be much appreciated.
>>
>>remove the space between -t and \t and it should work
> 
> 
> actually scratch that, it works either way. can you give a sample of the data ?
> 
> Regards,
> Nelis

The sample data has 9 fields, I am trying to sort on the fifth field, 
here is what I have tried.

sort -t\t +4 -5 -o test.txt sample.txt

I did try removing the space and it did not work, I have also tried 
removing the -5. I think the spaces in the third field are confusing sort.

BTW this is being done on a PC running FBSD 4.11 prerelease #1

Thanks for your help and suggestions.

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