Re: sort documentation

[Eric Blake]

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According to Chuck Simmons on 2/23/2007 8:00 PM:
> The fact that 'sort' doesn't sort strings in alphabetical order should be 
> documented in the man page in the 'Bugs' section.  An obvious option should 
> be provided to be able to sort strings in alphabetical order.
> 
> The man page version is
> sort (coreutils) 5.2.1            April 2006                          SORT(1)

Consider upgrading.  The documentation for the latest stable version, 6.7,
does exactly that:

$ sort --help | tail -n 6
*** WARNING ***
The locale specified by the environment affects sort order.
Set LC_ALL=C to get the traditional sort order that uses
native byte values.

Report bugs to <address@hidden>.

> 
> The above was produced with sort "-k 2,2 -k1,1n"  Notice that the "United 
> States" strings are not adjacent, nor are the Hawaii strings within the 
> united states.  This used to work long ago and far away, probably on a 
> Solaris box.

On a machine using the C locale.  This is a FAQ; read
http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/faq/#Sort-does-not-sort-in-normal-order_0021
for ideas on how to set your locale to something that sorts the way you want.

- --
Don't work too hard, make some time for fun as well!

Eric Blake             address@hidden
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