Sponsor:

Your company here, and a link to your site. Click to find out more.

decorate - Man Page

convert fields of various formats

Synopsis

decorate [OPTION]... [INPUT]
decorate --decorate [OPTION]... [INPUT]
decorate --undecorate N [OPTION]... [INPUT]

Description

Converts (and optionally sorts) fields of various formats

With --decorate: adds the converted fields to the start of each line and prints and prints it to STDOUT; does not sort.

With --undecorate: removes the first N fields from the input; Use as post-processing step after sort(1).

Without --decorate and --undecorate: automatically decorates the input, runs sort(1) and undecorates the result; This is the easiest method to use. The decorate program allows sorting input according to various ordering, e.g. IP addresses, roman numerals, etc. It works in tandem with sort(1) to perform the actual sorting.

The idea was suggested by Pádraig Brady in https://lists.gnu.org/r/bug-coreutils/2015-06/msg00076.html:

1. Decorate: convert the input to a sortable-format as additional fields
2. Sort according to the inserted fields
3. Undecorate: remove the inserted fields

Options

General Options

--decorate

decorate/convert the specified fields and print the output to STDOUT. Does not automatically run sort(1) or undecorates the output

--header=N

does not decorate or sort the first N lines

-H

same as --header=N

-k,  --key=KEYDEF

key/field to sort; same syntax as sort(1), optionally followed by ':method' to convert to the field into a sortable value; see examples and available conversion below

-t,  --field-separator=SEP

use SEP instead of non-blank to blank transition

--print-sort-args

print adjusted parameters for sort(1); Useful when using --decorate and then manually running sort(1)

--undecorate=N

removes the first N fields

-z,  --zero-terminated

line delimiter is NUL, not newline

--sort-cmd=/path/to/sort

Alternative sort(1) to use.

--help

display this help and exit

--version

output version information and exit

The following options are passed to sort as-is (Most of them assume GNU sort):

-c, --check

--compress-program

--random-source

-s, --stable

--batch-size

-S, --buffer-size

-T, --temporary-directory

-u, --unique

--parallel

Available conversions methods (use with -k):

as-is

copy as-is

roman

roman numerals

strlen

length (in bytes) of the specified field

ipv4

dotted-decimal IPv4 addresses

ipv6

IPv6 addresses

ipv4inet

number-and-dots IPv4 addresses (incl. octal, hex values)

ipv6v4map

IPv6 and IPv4 (as IPv4-Mapped IPv6) addresses

ipv6v4comp

IPv6 and IPv4 (as IPv4-Compatible IPv6) addresses

Examples

Example of preparing to sort by roman numerals:

    $ printf "%s\n" C V III IX XI | decorate -k1,1:roman --decorate
    0000100 C
    0000005 V
    0000003 III
    0000009 IX
    0000011 XI

The output can now be sent to sort(1), followed by removing (=undecorate) the first field.

    $ printf "%s\n" C V III IX XI \
           | decorate -k1,1:roman --decorate \
           | sort -k1,1 \
           | decorate --undecorate 1
    III
    V
    IX
    XI
    C

decorate(1) can automatically combine the decorate-sort-undecorate steps (when run without --decorate or --undecorate):

    $ printf "%s\n" C V III IX XI | decorate -k1,1:roman
    III
    V
    IX
    XI
    C

Additional Information

See GNU Datamash Website (https://www.gnu.org/software/datamash)

Author

Written by Assaf Gordon, Shawn Wagner and Erik Auerswald.

See Also

The full documentation for decorate is maintained as a Texinfo manual.  If the info and decorate programs are properly installed at your site, the command

info decorate

should give you access to the complete manual.

Info

July 2022 decorate 1.8-dirty