Does sort -2,3n work properly?

[Bartosz Gołaszewski]

Hi,

for the following input:
42      1       3       woot
42      1       010     zoology
egg     1       2       papyrus
7       3       42      soup
999     3       0       algebra

this is what debug-enabled sort in coreutils 8.22 outputs:

% sort --debug ./input -k2,3n
sort: using simple byte comparison
sort: key 1 is numeric and spans multiple fields
42      1       010     zoology
        _
_______________________________
42      1       3       woot
        _
____________________________
egg     1       2       papyrus
        _
_______________________________
7       3       42      soup
        _
____________________________
999     3       0       algebra
        _
_______________________________

It seems as if only the second field was used in comparison, even
though sort knows that the key 'spans multiple fields'. Is this a
correct behaviour? If so - could anyone explain why?

Best regards,
Bartosz Gołaszewski