Sort program

[Ray Jetton]

sort (GNU textutils) 2.0
Written by Mike Haertel.

Copyright (C) 1999 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
This is free software; see the source for copying conditions.  There is NO
warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

I have a text file named base.txt that has the following structure:

/* Structure for the base file. */
struct datafile{
char     sex[1];                       /*   0 -   0 */
char     Purpose[8];                   /*   1 -   8 */
char     Construction[8];              /*   9 -  16 */
char     Descrip1[8];                  /*  17 -  24 */
char     Descrip2[8];                  /*  25 -  32 */
char     Descrip3[8];                  /*  33 -  40 */
char     file_name[8];                 /*  41 -  48 */
char     supply_num[16];               /*  49 -  64 */
char     describe[61];                 /*  65 - 125 */
char     our_part_no[17];              /* 126 - 142 */
char     price_wout_gold[10];          /* 143 - 152 */
char     weight_24[12];                /* 153 - 164 */
char     html_no[8];                   /* 165 - 172 */
char     expansion[2];                 /* 173 - 174 */
char     year[1];                      /* 175 - 175 */
char     page_no[3];                   /* 176 - 178 */
char     crlf[2];                      /* 179 - 180 */
/* New length is 180 */
     };

The problem occurs in Descrip1, Descrip2, and Descrip3, which are randomly filled with descriptive information.  A portion of the problem file follows.
This is the first 64 columns of the problem file which contains 12,700+ lines.

FBracelet14K GoldAquamari                330044  330044
FBracelet14K GoldAquamari                330068  330068
FBracelet14K GoldAquamari                330132  330132
FBracelet14K GoldBangle                  br249   BR249
FBracelet14K GoldBangle                  br250   BR250
FBracelet14K GoldBangle                  br251   BR251
FBracelet14K GoldBangle                  br252   BR252
FBracelet14K GoldBangle  CZ              br056   BR056
FBracelet14K GoldBangle  CZ              br058   BR058
FBracelet14K GoldBangle  CZ              br059   BR059
FBracelet14K GoldBangle  CZ              br061   BR061
FBracelet14K GoldBangle  CZ              br062   BR062
FBracelet14K GoldBangle  CZ              br064   BR064
FBracelet14K GoldBangle  CZ              br065   BR065
FBracelet14K GoldBangle  CZ              br5085  BR5085
FBracelet14K GoldBangle                  fbr10   FBR10
FBracelet14K GoldBangle                  fbr11   FBR11
FBracelet14K GoldBangle                  fbr8    FBR8
FBracelet14K GoldBangle                  fbr9    FBR9
FBracelet14K Gold                        br004   BR004
FBracelet14K Gold                        br005   BR005
FBracelet14K Gold                        br261   BR261

When sorted, the CZ entries should be grouped together at the bottom of their column.  Instead of sorting on the CZ column it seems to be sorting on the next column.  I want the sort program to sort across the full line of 180 characters which I cannot seem to get it to do.  I want the spaces to be treated exactly like alphabetic characters and not as field indicators.

I have tried such things as "sort base.txt -k1.1 -o temp.txt", and many other command line entries that seemed like they should work, but nothing seems to help.  Is this a bug or do I just not know what I am doing?

--
Ray Jetton
The Gold Place
338 Las Brisas
Arlington, Texas 76006-5836
817.652.0402 Local
800.579.6222 Toll Free
817.652.0520 Fax
http://www.goldplace.com