Re: Sort: Is this a bug or not?

[Miklos Janosi]

Paul Eggert wrote:
>
> OK, I see the problem now.  The problem is that you (and I)
> misunderstood how `cut' operates.  `cut -c4-6,1-3' is equivalent to
> `cut -c1-6'; it does not reorder columns.  That is how traditional
> Unix `cut' works, and POSIX requires this behavior.
Many thanks to Paul Eggert for figuring this out!!!
This is how I checked that the sort worked:

cut -c3-14  xx > c1
cut -c32-35 xx > c2
cut -c26-31 xx > c3
cut -c15-25 xx > c4
paste -d'\0' c1 c2 c3 c4 | sort > yy

sort -t: -k1.3,1.14 -k1.32,1.35 -k1.26,1.31 -k1.15,1.25 -o xx xx

cut -c3-14  xx > c1
cut -c32-35 xx > c2
cut -c26-31 xx > c3
cut -c15-25 xx > c4
paste -d'\0' c1 c2 c3 c4 > zz

diff yy zz

--                        ________________________
--   __    /|___  Two    |                        |
--  |  |  /     | wrongs |  Miki Janosi           |
-- _|  |_ \  ___| won't  |  address@hidden    |
-- \    /  \|     make a |  (330) 972-8640        |
--  \  /  ___|\   right. |                        |
--   \/  |     \      /-----------------------/   |
--       |___  /      \     3 lefts will.     \ _/
--           |/        `------------------------