Bug in sort?

[Bernd Klein]

Hi,

I think, I may have found a bug in "sort".

If I take the following file:

sdf 4 trc
xya 3 trt
bal 1 trt
blabla 0.5 abcd
xyz 1 ggg
xyz2 0.4 df
xyz3 0.1 xyz5
xyz4 0.002 bal
xyz5 0.1 xyz2

"sort +1 -2 example.txt" gives me the following result:
xyz4 0.002 bal
xyz3 0.1 xyz5
xyz5 0.1 xyz2
xyz2 0.4 df
blabla 0.5 abcd
bal 1 trt
xyz 1 ggg
xya 3 trt
sdf 4 trc

which is what I expect to happen, but if I use "sort -g +1 -2 example.txt"
(-g according to man page: compare according to general numerical value)
I get the confusing result:
blabla 0.5 abcd
xyz2 0.4 df
xyz3 0.1 xyz5
xyz4 0.002 bal
xyz5 0.1 xyz2
bal 1 trt
xyz 1 ggg
xya 3 trt
sdf 4 trc

Most probably I am messing up some things, but I don't know what.
I am using this version with SuSE 9.2:
sort (coreutils) 5.2.1

If I do the same thing in a cygwin shell, everything works the way, I expect 
it to work, i.e. I get for "-g" the sorted output as in 
"sort +1 -2 example.txt"
And I get a numerical ordering, if I use exponential expressions like e.g. 
7e-7

Is there somebody, who knows about this problem?

Best wishes,

Bernd

-- 
Bernd C. Klein                                   |  
URL: http://www.bklein.de, e-mail: address@hidden