Bash shell - Sort a list of words by the second letter?

Question

I need to sort a list of words alphabetically by the second letter and I can't seem to figure out a way to do it.

Unsorted:

smokelessly
toelike
arsenous
malabar
antiperspirant
hock
nibbing
paleographically
goon

Sorted:

malabar
paleographically
nibbing
smokelessly
antiperspirant
hock
toelike
goon
arsenous

I've read about the sort command but it doesn't seem to have the functionality to let me do this?

Answer 1

sort -kX.Y is your friend! X refers to the column and Y to the character.

$ sort -k1.2 file
malabar
paleographically
nibbing
smokelessly
antiperspirant
hock
toelike
goon
arsenous

If you want to define the last position to sort from, you can use

sort -k1.2,Z file

---

From man sort:

-k, --key=KEYDEF

sort via a key; KEYDEF gives location and type

KEYDEF is F[.C][OPTS][,F[.C][OPTS]] for start and stop position, where F is a field number and C a character position in the field; both are origin 1, and the stop position defaults to the line's end. If neither -t nor -b is in effect, characters in a field are counted from the beginning of the preceding whitespace. OPTS is one or more single-letter ordering options [bdfgiMhnRrV], which override global ordering options for that key. If no key is given, use the entire line as the key.