Re: sort bug?

[Jim Meyering]

Jan Jannink <address@hidden> wrote:

| I'm using this version of sort:
|
| address@hidden /tmp]$ sort --version
| sort (GNU textutils) 2.0.11
| Written by Mike Haertel.
|
| This file has been sorted:
|
| b_1-a
| b_1-a
| b1-a
| b_1-d
| b1-d2
| b1-d2
| b1-d_2
| b1-s
| b_1-w
| b_1-z
| b1-z
|
|
| Shouldn't the order be:
|
| b1-a
| b1-d2
| b1-d2
| b1-d_2
| b1-s
| b1-z
| b_1-a
| b_1-a
| b_1-d
| b_1-w
| b_1-z

Thanks for the report.
Here's the canned reply:
------------

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.