Hi, I got a strange ordering when I applied the linux sort command. Please see below for the details: [ajesh@gwta3004 tmp]$ cat a .a ba .b bb .c bc [ajesh@gwta3004 tmp]$ sort a .a .b ba bb bc .c NOTE: .a and .b appears before ba and bb, where as .c appears after bc. In general if the file has strings of the type . and , then for all x <= y, .x appear before yx and for all x>y, .x appear after yx Is this expected behavior? Regards Ajesh --