Re: sort bug

[Bob Proulx]

> I've read the bugs archive and changelog on 2.0g
> and tried compiling 2.0g to fix a sort problem,
> but it still looks broken:

You have encountered a common problem which occurs on some Linux
distributions which set LANG to en_US or other such non-POSIX sort
order.  As long as you are updating your software I will note that the
lastest test release of sort and textutils is:

  ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/fetish/textutils-2.0.11.tar.gz

Jim has previously answered this type of report with the following
response.

Bob


You are using the version of sort that comes with textutils-2.0
or newer and have reported a problem whereby it is sorting in
some non-ASCII order.

That is due not to a bug in sort, but to the fact that you have
set environment variables that direct sort to use improper locale-
specific tables (you or your vendor have probably set environment
variables like LANG, LC_ALL, or LANGUAGE to en_US).

Unset them, and then set LC_ALL to POSIX

  # If you use bash or some other Bourne-based shell,
  export LC_ALL=POSIX

  # If you use a C-shell,
  setenv LC_ALL POSIX

and sort will then work the way you expect.
-----------

BTW, in recent textutils test releases, sort --help output
includes this:

  *** WARNING ***
  This version of sort honors the locale settings in your environment.
  For example, if you set one of the LANG or LC_ALL environment variables
  to `en_US', then sort will work very differently than most people expect.
  If that's not what you want, then set LC_ALL to POSIX in your environment.