sorting (using sort/sed/awk/whatever)

[S. Luke Jones]

Here's a brain teaser for you UNIX tool-and-shell gurus out there.

My news-reader presents articles in the order they appear in
my .newsrc file.  How can I sort it by subject?  (I don't want to do
it by hand because it seems like there's two or three new newsgroups a
day.) 
If I just sort (no options) my .newsrc I get something like
	comp.lang.c++:
	comp.zillions.of.other.things:
	comp.std.c++:
	sci.random.stuff:
	rec.c++:
	talk.bizarre:
	talk.politics.oop.c++:
and so forth.  The articles on (C++) are not clumped together the way
I want them.  But because the c++ appears at a different depth in the
name of each newsgroup,
	sort -t. +5 -6 +4 -5 +3 -4 +2 -3 +1 -2 .newsrc > puke
won't work either.  What am I missing?  Surely there's got to be an
easy way to do this.  Suggestions?
-- 
Luke Jones,   luke at mtung.att.com,  ...!att!mtung!luke,   phone 201/957-2733
Notworked Software Laboratory, Computer Systems Division, Bell Laboratories
Disclaimer: the opinions are mine but I had to sign away my rights to them.
Quote:  "System Test? That's for *idiots*!" (paraphrasing Insp. H. Calahan)