Re: uncomprehensible bug in join

[Jim Meyering]

Henning Rust <address@hidden> wrote:
> for some uncomprehensible reasons join does not join the two files properly.
> The command is
>    join -a 1 1.dat 2.dat > out.dat
>
> I also tried to shorten the gap present in 2.dat. For very smal gaps
> it worked, sometimes also for larger gaps. I could not find any
> systematics in the problem.
> I attached the files.
...
> 1944_10_29
> 1944_10_30
> 1944_10_31
> 1944_11_1
> 1944_11_2
> 1944_11_3
> 1944_11_4
> 1944_11_5
> 1944_11_6
> 1944_11_7
> 1944_11_8
> 1944_11_9
> 1944_11_10
> 1944_11_11

Your input files are not sorted.
For join to work properly, they must be.
If I sort the above few lines, I get this:

1944_10_29
1944_10_30
1944_10_31
1944_11_1
1944_11_10
1944_11_11
1944_11_2
1944_11_3
1944_11_4
1944_11_5
1944_11_6
1944_11_7
1944_11_8
1944_11_9