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

***************************************************************************
The information contained in this communication is confidential, is
intended only for the use of the recipient named above, and may be legally
privileged.

If the reader of this message is not the intended recipient, you are
hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution or copying of this
communication is strictly prohibited.

If you have received this communication in error, please resend this
communication to the sender and delete the original message or any copy
of it from your computer system.

Thank You.
****************************************************************************