GNU bug report logs - #14318
sort: unexpected results

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Message #5 received at submit <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Kenneth Dickman <kenneth.dickman <at> citrix.com>
To: "bug-coreutils <at> gnu.org" <bug-coreutils <at> gnu.org>
Cc: Kenneth Dickman <kenneth.dickman <at> citrix.com>,
	Vijay Patel <Vijay.Patel <at> citrix.com>
Subject: sort: unexpected results
Date: Mon, 29 Apr 2013 18:37:10 -0700

Why does putting "depot" in the input file, corrupt the sort function? How can I get sort to operate properly?

$ cat good
bin/... //b/bin/...
logs/... //logs/...
... //b/...
$ sort good
... //b/...
bin/... //b/bin/...
logs/... //logs/...
$ cat bad
bin/... //depot/b/bin/...
logs/... //depot/logs/...
... //depot/b/...
$ sort bad
bin/... //depot/b/bin/...
... //depot/b/...
logs/... //depot/logs/...
$

This occurs on RedHat:

$ uname -a
Linux hidden-name 2.6.32-71.15.1.el6.x86_64 #1 SMP Sun Jan 23 10:39:44 EST 2011 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
$ which sort
/bin/sort
$ file /bin/sort
/bin/sort: ELF 64-bit LSB executable, x86-64, version 1 (SYSV), dynamically linked (uses shared libs), for GNU/Linux 2.6.18, stripped
$

And on Linux Mint (which is on top of Ubuntu):

$ uname -a
Linux hidden_name 3.2.0-23-generic #36-Ubuntu SMP Tue Apr 10 20:39:51 UTC 2012 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
$ which sort
/usr/bin/sort
$

Thanks for your help!
Ken

Message #8 received at 14318 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Pádraig Brady <P <at> draigBrady.com>
To: Kenneth Dickman <kenneth.dickman <at> citrix.com>
Cc: Vijay Patel <Vijay.Patel <at> citrix.com>, 14318 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: Re: bug#14318: sort: unexpected results
Date: Tue, 30 Apr 2013 09:40:14 +0100

tag 14318 notabug
stop

On 04/30/2013 02:37 AM, Kenneth Dickman wrote:
> Why does putting "depot" in the input file, corrupt the sort function? How can I get sort to operate properly?
> 
> $ cat good
> bin/... //b/bin/...
> logs/... //logs/...
> ... //b/...
> $ sort good
> ... //b/...
> bin/... //b/bin/...
> logs/... //logs/...
> $ cat bad
> bin/... //depot/b/bin/...
> logs/... //depot/logs/...
> ... //depot/b/...
> $ sort bad
> bin/... //depot/b/bin/...
> ... //depot/b/...
> logs/... //depot/logs/...
> $
> 
> This occurs on RedHat:

This is because in your locale, punctuation is ignored in the presence
of other sort data. I.E. '.' and ' ' are not significant to the sort.
To turn off the locale specific sorting you need to use something like:
LC_ALL=C sort ...

http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/faq/coreutils-faq.html#Sort-does-not-sort-in-normal-order_0021

thanks,
Pádraig.

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