Sort negative decimal values

Question

Dealing with the processing of the log in the following format:

# the system name: dG
MD_cluster10_1_300K: -34.48
MD_cluster11_1_300K: -40.31
MD_cluster1_1_300K: -40.23
MD_cluster2_1_300K: -37.86
MD_cluster3_1_300K: -25.65
MD_cluster5_1_300K: -11.91
MD_cluster6_1_300K: -0.50
MD_cluster8_1_300K: -16.62
MD_cluster9_1_300K: -15.26

I need (ignoring the first line) to sort the data according to the values in the second column from most negative to positive, and save it as a new log.

Would the sort utility work for such case?

sort -n ./file_unsorted > file_sorted

Answer 1

Command:

grep -v '#' file_unsorted | sort -t ':' -k 2,2n > file_sorted

file_unsorted:

MD_cluster10_1_300K: -34.48
MD_cluster11_1_300K: -40.31
MD_cluster1_1_300K: -40.23
MD_cluster2_1_300K: -37.86
MD_cluster3_1_300K: -25.65
MD_cluster5_1_300K: -11.91
MD_cluster6_1_300K: -0.50
MD_cluster8_1_300K: -16.62
MD_cluster9_1_300K: -15.26

Output (file_sorted):

MD_cluster11_1_300K: -40.31
MD_cluster1_1_300K: -40.23
MD_cluster2_1_300K: -37.86
MD_cluster10_1_300K: -34.48
MD_cluster3_1_300K: -25.65
MD_cluster8_1_300K: -16.62
MD_cluster9_1_300K: -15.26
MD_cluster5_1_300K: -11.91
MD_cluster6_1_300K: -0.50

Answer 2

check this out too :

with sed

sed '1d' log.txt | sort -k2 -n

with tail

tail -n +2 log.txt | sort -k2 -n 

with awk

awk 'NR>1{print | "sort -k2 -n"}' log.txt 

output

MD_cluster11_1_300K: -40.31
MD_cluster1_1_300K: -40.23
MD_cluster2_1_300K: -37.86
MD_cluster10_1_300K: -34.48
MD_cluster3_1_300K: -25.65
MD_cluster8_1_300K: -16.62
MD_cluster9_1_300K: -15.26
MD_cluster5_1_300K: -11.91
MD_cluster6_1_300K: -0.50