Appleworks 6.2.9 Spreadsheet Sorting

Question

I am running Appleworks 6.2.9 on my PPC G4 Laptop. I have a one column list of data of approx 12,000 entries. Each one is not unique, rather they're duplicates in assorted quantities.
Is there a sort function where the program can eliminate duplicates so my final list is only one of each entry, but with some sort of column with a frequency count that lists how many times each entry appeared?

Answer 1

Hello
In case, here's another possibility using Perl, which is  wrapped in AppleScript for convenience.
Recipe.
1) Make the input text file in UTF-8 by copying the column in AW6 SS document and pasting it into plain text document in TextEdit.app.
You may copy and append all data into one plain text document. Save it with name "in.txt" on desktop. Please make sure you set the text encoding for saving file to UTF-8 in TextEdit's preference.
2) Copy the AppleScript code listed below into new document of Script Editor.app and run it.
It will create a plain text file in UTF-8 named "out.txt" on desktop which contains lines with two fields separated by tab, i.e., each line = data entry, tab and its frequency; sorted by frequency in descending order (and sorted by entry in ascending order for those with the same frequency).
--applescript
set infile to (path to desktop)'s POSIX path & "in.txt"
set outfile to (path to desktop)'s POSIX path & "out.txt"
set sh to "
in=" & infile's quoted form & "
out=" & outfile's quoted form & "
perl -CSD -l015 -015 <<'EOF' - \"$in\" > \"$out\"
my %hash = ();
while (<>) {
    chomp;
    $hash{$_} += 1;
local $, = qq(\\t);
for (sort { $hash{$b} <=> $hash{$a} || $a cmp $b } keys %hash) {
    print $_, $hash{$_};
EOF
do shell script sh
--end of applescript
Notes.
• Input text file is assumed to use CR (U+000D: CARRIAGE RETURN) as line terminator. If you copy the data from AW6 and paste it to TextEdit, this will be the case.
• Output text file uses CR as line terminator.
• If you want the result sorted by frequency in ascending order, change the following part:
for (sort { $hash{$b} <=> $hash{$a} || $a cmp $b } keys %hash) {
to:
for (sort { $hash{$a} <=> $hash{$b} || $a cmp $b } keys %hash) {
Kind regards,
H