[PATCH] sort: EOL included in final field

[Herbert Xu]

The final newline is included in the final field when fields are specified
through -k.  Here is a test case:

$ sort -c -k 1,1 <<eof
> a
> a b
> eof
sort: -:2: disorder: a b

The changelog says:

1999-11-03  Paul Eggert  <address@hidden>

        * NEWS, doc/textutils.texi:
        Do not consider newline to be part of a line when comparing lines
        in `sort' and `comm'.  POSIX.2 requires that we consider newline,
        but this is a bug in the spec and the bug will likely be fixed.
        * src/comm.c (compare_files): Likewise.
        * src/sort.c (begfield, limfield, findlines, keycompare, compare):
        Likewise.

1999-05-20  Paul Eggert  <address@hidden>

        * src/sort.c: Treat the trailing newline as part of the line,
        as required by POSIX.2.

The only copy of POSIX.2 I have access to is the September 1991 draft
version 11.2.  Neither it, SuSv2, or the Austin Draft Issue 6 contain
any references to the requirement of the trailing newline to be considered
either as part of the last resort comparison or when constructing fields.

In fact, all three documents contain this in their
Rationale/Application Usage section:

 The default value for -t, <blank>, has different properties than, for
 example, -t "<space>".  If a line contains:

       <space><space>foo

 the following treatment would occur with default separation versus
 specifically selecting a <space>:

                 Field        Default        -t "<space>"
                 _____   _________________   ____________
                   1     <space><space>foo      empty
                   2           empty            empty                       1
                   3           empty             foo                        1

So it is clear the the intention is to not consider the new line when
delimiting fields.

The following patch removes the final newline from consideration when
delimiting fields.
-- 
Debian GNU/Linux 2.2 is out! ( http://www.debian.org/ )
Email:  Herbert Xu ~{PmV>HI~} <address@hidden>
Home Page: http://gondor.apana.org.au/~herbert/
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