How to sort on a field numerically

Question

I am trying to sort a file called "Team_James" numerically by the last column, and then I would like to save the output as a new file called "file3".

I tried the command sort Team_James | > s3, but I don't know how to do it, and I don't even know what -k is! I have been looking everywhere on the Internet.

What am I doing wrong?

Here what the output of my command cat Team_James

Pam Murray      4    657-4324  18
Jim Brown       8    467-8743  22
Jim Roberts     17   728-8295  9
Joyce Murray    7    235-1432  13

Answer 1

Looking at the table, in column#1 there are spaces between first name and last name. This means, sort will consider the first and last names two separate columns. As a result, the last column of the input table is #5. The command below, assume that all the names provided in column #1 are first/last and there are no middle names.

cat Team_James | sort -s -n -k 5.1 > file3
Jim Roberts     17   728-8295  9
Joyce Murray    7    235-1432  13
Pam Murray      4    657-4324  18
Jim Brown       8    467-8743  22

-n, --numeric-sort   compare according to string numerical value  
-s, --stable         stabilize sort by disabling last-resort comparison  
-k, --key=POS1[,POS2]  
      start a key at POS1 (origin 1), end it at POS2 (default end of  
      line).  See POS syntax above.