Re: bug in sort, or confusion on my part

[Bob Proulx]

> bash$ sort -k 1,1rn -k 2,2 example
> bash$ sort --version
> sort (GNU textutils) 2.0a
> bash$ rpm -q -f `which sort`
> textutils-2.0a-2
> 
> This is a vanilla redhat 6.2 system.

Your report matches a common pattern.  Jim has previously answered
these reports with the following mail.  Note that some vendors set
those language variables for you without you being aware of them.

Bob

========================================================================

Jim Meyering writes:

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.