bug#21000: coreutils 8.24 sort -h gets ordering wrong

[Paul Eggert]

Linda Walsh wrote:
> since the output
> is targetted for 3-4 digits+ a suffix, one would just normalize them.

If the output is that of 'du' or 'df' and has just a few digits and always uses 
a consistent suffix, then there is no need to normalize it; that is what 'sort' 
does now.  In this case 'sort' doesn't need to know whether the output uses 
powers-of-1024 or powers-of-1000.  However, if the output is from some other 
random program that uses suffixes inconsistently, all that goes out the window: 
normalization and some form of arbitrary-precision arithmetic would be required 
and 'sort' would need to be told whether the suffixes use powers of 1024 or 
powers of 1000.

I didn't understand the code snippet you sent, but it appears to have rounding 
errors.  'sort' doesn't have rounding errors when doing the comparison in 
question.  Let's not introduce them now.