Subject: Possible bug in sort -g

From: Matthijs Nescio <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 4 Apr 2016 13:46:46 +0200

Hi,

I seem to have detected a bug in sort. Can you confirm?

~ $ 
~ $ sort --version
sort (GNU coreutils) 8.4
Copyright (C) 2010 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <http://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>.
This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.
There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.

Written by Mike Haertel and Paul Eggert.
~ $ cat test.txt | sort -g

2e-1
2e-1
2e-1
2e-1
1.0e-1
1.0e-2
1.0e-2
1.0e-3
1.0e-4
2.0e-1
2.0e-2
2.0e-2
2.0e-2
2.0e-2
3.0e-2
3.0e-2
3.0e-2
3.0e-2
3.0e-2
3.0e-2
15
2e+1
2e+1
2e+1
2e+1
115
119
150
2e+2
2e+2
2e+2
2e+2
2e+3
2e+3
2e+3
2e+3
~ $ cat test.txt
3.0e-2
1.0e-4
2.0e-2
3.0e-2
1.0e-1
2.0e-1
3.0e-2
1.0e-2
2.0e-2
3.0e-2
1.0e-2
2.0e-2
3.0e-2
1.0e-3
2.0e-2
3.0e-2
15
119
115
150
2e+1
2e-1
2e+3
2e+2
2e+1
2e-1
2e+3
2e+2
2e+1
2e-1
2e+3
2e+2
2e+1
2e-1
2e+3
2e+2

~ $  

I think this result is never what anybody would expect; 2e-1 is larger than 1.0e-1 and  1.0e-4 is smaller than 1.0e-1.

The above is running on Ubuntu 14.04. On a Cygwin installation the result is fine.

Thank you, kind regards, Matthijs.