Thread: Text > Sort > Array. AWK Program

I'm having problem with an bit of school work.

I'm meant to be getting a text file, sorting it into descending number order and then loading it into an array. All within a shell script. This is the very first time I've used AWK and although I have read all the literature provided it doesn't seem to cover how to get started.

So far all I have is:

Code:

#!/bin/awk -f

myarray[1]=data.txt

But obviously that doesn't work.

Would be great if someone could point me in the right direction, how to define an array from a text file within a shell script using awk.

Thanks in advance.

Post what the data file looks like, besides the way you're going about it is not the way to read a file using awk.
Pickup a copy of The AWK Programming Language which is by far the best book from its eponymous authors.

I think they should've skipped alphabetic order of authors in that book.

itCbitC +1. That's nice book.

Read file into an awk array, then use something like bubble sort to put it in descending order:

Code:

awk '{
  a[NR]=$0
}END{
  <sorting array code here>
  for (i=1;i<=NR;i++)
    print a[i]
}' data.txt