bug#21000: coreutils 8.24 sort -h gets ordering wrong

[Linda Walsh]

Paul Eggert wrote:
> Linda Walsh wrote:
> > since the output
> > is targetted for 3-4 digits+ a suffix, one would just normalize them.
>
> If the output is that of 'du' or 'df' and has just a few digits and 
> always uses a consistent suffix, then there is no need to normalize it; 
> that is what 'sort' does now.  In this case 'sort' doesn't need to know 
> whether the output uses powers-of-1024 or powers-of-1000.  However, if 
> the output is from some other random program that uses suffixes 
> inconsistently, all that goes out the window: normalization and some 
> form of arbitrary-precision arithmetic would be required and 'sort' 
> would need to be told whether the suffixes use powers of 1024 or powers 
> of 1000.
>
> I didn't understand the code snippet you sent, but it appears to have 
> rounding errors.  'sort' doesn't have rounding errors when doing the 
> comparison in question.  Let's not introduce them now.
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It has to.  It's rounding to 2-3 digits.