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bug#66253: sort manpage should be more explicit
From: |
Jorge Stolfi |
Subject: |
bug#66253: sort manpage should be more explicit |
Date: |
Thu, 28 Sep 2023 07:11:50 -0300 |
User-agent: |
Horde Application Framework 5 |
The full documentation of sort explains that numeric sorting (as in
"sort -n") accepts a leading "-" sign, decimal points, thousands
separators, etc, but does not accept an explicit "+" sign. Values with
explicit "+" are treated as numeric 0 and ties are broken by alpha sort.
However, the manpage only says that "-n" "compares according to string
numerical value" -- and one would expect the numerical value of "+100"
to be 100, not zero.
It took me an hour to figure out that my "sort -n" was failing because
of this "feature". Surely many users have wasted time too, or worse.
So please either
1) explain precisely IN THE MANPAGE what is a valid number;
2) make numeric sort accept a leading "+", as users would expect;
3) make numeric sort abort with an error message if any field that is
supposed to be sorted numerically is not a valid number.
I think the best solution for users would be to implement all three of
these...
Thank you, and all the best
--jorge
--
Jorge Stolfi - Professor Titular/Full Professor
Instituto de Computação/Computer Science Dept
Universidade Estadual de Campinas/State University of Campinas
Campinas, SP - Brazil
- bug#66253: sort manpage should be more explicit,
Jorge Stolfi <=