problem with command sort after uniq -c

[Damien ANCELIN]

Hello,

I met a problem with the sort command : I've used the uniq command with 
the -c option to count some numbers, and then applying sort -n don't 
sort lines by numeric order of the first field.
Here is an example (my sort version is 5.97) :
$ cat bug_sort | sort -n
  1320 51970
  1692 12345
 22681 8060
 26063 8649
  2668 33603
  3487 44496
  4350 23246
 47013 8000
  5447 20000
 81724 5000
If I add a non-numeric and non-space character between the 2 fields, 
sort -n works properly :
$ cat bug_sort | sed "s/\([0-9]\) \([0-9]\)/\1 -\2/" | sort -n
  1320 -51970
  1692 -12345
  2668 -33603
  3487 -44496
  4350 -23246
  5447 -20000
 22681 -8060
 26063 -8649
 47013 -8000
 81724 -5000

With only spaces between the 2 fields, sort -n read 1 number per line 
and use it to do the sort : 2668 33603 is read as 266833603. With this 
consideration, the result of sort is correct, but it's not what I 
expected (and I didn't see this behaviour in the documentation).

Regards,
Damien

--
Damien ANCELIN
INRIA - ENS-Lyon, LIP (RESO)
Bureau 322 Sud
Tel : +33 4 72 72 85 02