Sort two text files with its indented text aligned to it

Question

I would like to compare two of my log files generated before and after an implementation to see if it has impacted anything. However, the order of the logs I get is not the same all the time. Since, the log file also has multiple indented lines, when I tried to sort, everything is sorted. But, I would like to keep the child intact with the parent. Indented lines are spaces and not tab.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. I am fine with any windows solution or Linux one.

Eg of the file:

#This is a sample code

Parent1 to be verified

    Child1 to be verified

    Child2 to be verified
        Child21 to be verified
        Child23 to be verified
        Child22 to be verified
            Child221 to be verified

    Child4 to be verified

    Child5 to be verified
        Child53 to be verified
        Child52 to be verified
            Child522 to be verified
            Child521 to be verified

    Child3 to be verified

Answer 1

I am posting another answer here to sort it hierarchically, using python.

The idea is to attach the parents to the children to make sure that the children under the same parent are sorted together.

See the python script below:

"""Attach parent to children in an indentation-structured text"""
from typing import Tuple, List
import sys

# A unique separator to separate the parent and child in each line
SEPARATOR = '@'
# The indentation
INDENT = '    '

def parse_line(line: str) -> Tuple[int, str]:
    """Parse a line into indentation level and its content
    with indentation stripped

    Args:
        line (str): One of the lines from the input file, with newline ending

    Returns:
        Tuple[int, str]: The indentation level and the content with
            indentation stripped.

    Raises:
        ValueError: If the line is incorrectly indented.
    """
    # strip the leading white spaces
    lstripped_line = line.lstrip()
    # get the indentation
    indent = line[:-len(lstripped_line)]

    # Let's check if the indentation is correct
    # meaning it should be N * INDENT
    n = len(indent) // len(INDENT)
    if INDENT * n != indent:
        raise ValueError(f"Wrong indentation of line: {line}")

    return n, lstripped_line.rstrip('\r\n')


def format_text(txtfile: str) -> List[str]:
    """Format the text file by attaching the parent to it children

    Args:
        txtfile (str): The text file

    Returns:
        List[str]: A list of formatted lines
    """
    formatted = []
    par_indent = par_line = None

    with open(txtfile) as ftxt:
        for line in ftxt:
            # get the indentation level and line without indentation
            indent, line_noindent = parse_line(line)

            # level 1 parents
            if indent == 0:
                par_indent = indent
                par_line = line_noindent
                formatted.append(line_noindent)

            # children
            elif indent > par_indent:
                formatted.append(par_line +
                                 SEPARATOR * (indent - par_indent) +
                                 line_noindent)

                par_indent = indent
                par_line = par_line + SEPARATOR + line_noindent

            # siblings or dedentation
            else:
                # We just need first `indent` parts of parent line as our prefix
                prefix = SEPARATOR.join(par_line.split(SEPARATOR)[:indent])
                formatted.append(prefix + SEPARATOR + line_noindent)
                par_indent = indent
                par_line = prefix + SEPARATOR + line_noindent

    return formatted

def sort_and_revert(lines: List[str]):
    """Sort the formatted lines and revert the leading parents
    into indentations

    Args:
        lines (List[str]): list of formatted lines

    Prints:
        The sorted and reverted lines
    """
    sorted_lines = sorted(lines)
    for line in sorted_lines:
        if SEPARATOR not in line:
            print(line)
        else:
            leading, _, orig_line = line.rpartition(SEPARATOR)
            print(INDENT * (leading.count(SEPARATOR) + 1) + orig_line)

def main():
    """Main entry"""
    if len(sys.argv) < 2:
        print(f"Usage: {sys.argv[0]} <file>")
        sys.exit(1)

    formatted = format_text(sys.argv[1])
    sort_and_revert(formatted)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    main()

Let's save it as format.py, and we have a test file, say test.txt:

parent2
    child2-1
        child2-1-1
    child2-2
parent1
    child1-2
        child1-2-2
        child1-2-1
    child1-1

Let's test it:

$ python format.py test.txt
parent1
    child1-1
    child1-2
        child1-2-1
        child1-2-2
parent2
    child2-1
        child2-1-1
    child2-2

If you wonder how the format_text function formats the text, here is the intermediate results, which also explains why we could make file sorted as we wanted:

parent2
parent2@child2-1
parent2@child2-1@child2-1-1
parent2@child2-2
parent1
parent1@child1-2
parent1@child1-2@child1-2-2
parent1@child1-2@child1-2-1
parent1@child1-1

You may see that each child has its parents attached, all the way along to the root. So that the children under the same parent are sorted together.