On Sun, Sep 25, 2011 at 22:06, John R Pierce <pierce at hogranch.com> wrote: >> Is there a way to get the most common (unique) lines of the file? > > sort -k 3 | uniq -f 2 > > > which will sort starting at field 3, and then print lines that are > unique, skipping the first 2 fields, where fields by default are blank > separated. > Thanks, John. This looks to me that it will sort alphabetically, not by commonness. For instance: ERROR b ERROR a ERROR b Since "ERROR b" was reported more often than "ERROR a", I would prefer that the output be: ERROR b ERROR a I'm sorry for not making that so clear! Is there a good word for "most common" or "used most often" that would be concise in this context? Thanks! -- Dotan Cohen http://gibberish.co.il http://what-is-what.com