Subject: Re: bug#13638: linux-sort inconsistency

From: Paul Eggert <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 06 Feb 2013 10:05:58 -0800

On 02/06/13 02:49, Knud Arnbjerg Christensen wrote:
> linux-sort inconsistency occours when sorting an alfpha-numeric field,
> then the order becomes different depending on if the following field is numeric (file 1) or alfanumeric (file 2). In case one the length of the shorter fields is extended by ´zeros´ in case 2 the fields is extended by blanks which cause the different sorting order.
> 
> knud c
> 
> sort -k 1 file1>file1-sorted

It looks to me like 'sort' is behaving as documented.
'-k 1' means "use the concatenation of all the fields, starting
with field 1, as the key".  It does not mean "use
just field 1 as the key".  The documentation explains
this in some detail.