bug#9334: sort bug

[Eric Blake]

On 08/22/2011 07:47 AM, ROGER GRAYDON CHRISTMAN wrote:
> Thanks.  I guess I misinterpreted "uses a default key of the entire line"
> as "uses the entire line as keys by default", in which case if the first column
> was equal, it would compare the second, then the third, etc.
>
> I guess I don't know what "default key of the entire line" means with respect
> to -n,
> since it apparently didn't treat "1    12" as "112" and "1   4" as 14.
> I'm curious to find out what this phrase means in this context.

'sort --debug' is your friend.  In the C locale, global -n means 'parse 
as much of the prefix of the line as can be treated as a number as the 
primary key, then treat the entire line as the secondary key'.

$ printf ' 1 12\n 1  4\n 5 16\n 9 20\n' | LC_ALL=C sort --debug -n
sort: using simple byte comparison
 1  4
 _
_____
 1 12
 _
_____
 5 16
 _
_____
 9 20
 _
_____


--
Eric Blake   address@hidden    +1-801-349-2682
Libvirt virtualization library http://libvirt.org