I have found an anomaly in the sort utility.

Given the input:

1|1|1||Terry|a|Willis|||19610203|||||| 315 | E | Sutton | Street | || |Fayetteville|AR| 72701 | ||| |||||TEST||
2|1|1||Terry| |Willis|||19610204|||||| 315 | E | Sutton | Street | || |Fayetteville|AR|72701 | ||| |||||TEST|| 
3|1|1||Andy||smith   |||19610203|||||| 315 | | Willow | Street | || |Fayetteville|AR| 72701| ||| |||||TEST||
4|1|1||Andy||smith   |||19610302|||||| 315 | | Willow | Street | || |Fayetteville|AR| 72701 | ||| |||||TEST||
5|1|1||MARY||JONES   |||19610203|||||| 1400 |N | eastwood | drive | || |Fayetteville|AR| 72701 | ||| |||||TEST||
6|1|1||MARY||JONES   |||19660203|||||| 1400 |N | eastwood | drive | || |Fayetteville|AR| 72701 | ||| |||||TEST||
7|1|1||MARY||JONES   |||19610202|||||| 1400 |N | eastwood | drive | || |Fayetteville|AR| 72701 | ||| |||||TEST||
8|1|1||MARY||JONES   |||19615292|||||| 1400 |N | eastwood | drive | || |Fayetteville|AR| 72701 | ||| |||||TEST||
9|1|1||Terry|a|Willis|||1961020|||||| 315 | E | Sutton | Street | || |Fayetteville|AR| 72701 | ||| |||||TEST||
10|1|1||Robert|W|Travillian|||19610222|||||| 249 ||Murdoch|Street||||||51035| ||| |||||TEST||
11|1|1||Robert|W|Travillian|||19610222|||||||||||||||| ||| |||||TEST||


If I sort on the 10th pipe delimited field using the command:

sort -t\| -k 10  source.dat


I get the following result:


7|1|1||MARY||JONES   |||19610202|||||| 1400 |N | eastwood | drive | || |Fayetteville|AR| 72701 | ||| |||||TEST||
5|1|1||MARY||JONES   |||19610203|||||| 1400 |N | eastwood | drive | || |Fayetteville|AR| 72701 | ||| |||||TEST||
9|1|1||Terry|a|Willis|||1961020|||||| 315 | E | Sutton | Street | || |Fayetteville|AR| 72701 | ||| |||||TEST||
1|1|1||Terry|a|Willis|||19610203|||||| 315 | E | Sutton | Street | || |Fayetteville|AR| 72701 | ||| |||||TEST||
3|1|1||Andy||smith   |||19610203|||||| 315 | | Willow | Street | || |Fayetteville|AR| 72701| ||| |||||TEST||
2|1|1||Terry| |Willis|||19610204|||||| 315 | E | Sutton | Street | || |Fayetteville|AR|72701 | ||| |||||TEST|| 
10|1|1||Robert|W|Travillian|||19610222|||||| 249 ||Murdoch|Street||||||51035| ||| |||||TEST||
11|1|1||Robert|W|Travillian|||19610222|||||||||||||||| ||| |||||TEST||
4|1|1||Andy||smith   |||19610302|||||| 315 | | Willow | Street | || |Fayetteville|AR| 72701 | ||| |||||TEST||
8|1|1||MARY||JONES   |||19615292|||||| 1400 |N | eastwood | drive | || |Fayetteville|AR| 72701 | ||| |||||TEST||
6|1|1||MARY||JONES   |||19660203|||||| 1400 |N | eastwood | drive | || |Fayetteville|AR| 72701 | ||| |||||TEST||


Note in particular the location of record 9.

This occurs in Centos4 and Ubuntu 9.04 and RHEL5.5

__________________________________________________________________________________

Thomas A. J. Schweiger, PhD, PE  |  Acxiom Global Consulting Services 
535 Research Center Blvd.
Fayetteville, AR 72701
(501) 342-6294

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