Sort Version 2.0e bug

[konrad]

TWIMC --

I believe I have found a bug in sort 2.0e which is included 
with RedHat 6.2.  

The following is an intermediate file which contains 
intermediate data in random order for a billing history 
report:

################### cut here ###################
~~~~~~~~|~~~~~|15102.65|1553.06|1341.51|453.09|214.58|0.00|18664.89
20001110|12|1145.67|151.02|11.29|34.37|7.96|0.00|1350.31
20001110|13|1142.50|87.41|116.76|34.28|34.54|0.00|1415.49
20001110|14|1212.31|92.74|126.77|36.37|65.61|0.00|1533.80
20001110|~~~~~|15102.65|1553.06|1341.51|453.09|214.58|0.00|18664.89
20001110|15|11186.17|1190.07|1082.30|335.59|74.04|0.00|13868.17
20001110|16|416.00|31.82|4.39|12.48|32.43|0.00|497.12
################### cut here ###################

This data is gathered by a gawk script then passed thru 
/bin/sort and it should come out by date + department as
follows:

################### cut here ###################
20001110|12|1145.67|151.02|11.29|34.37|7.96|0.00|1350.31
20001110|13|1142.50|87.41|116.76|34.28|34.54|0.00|1415.49
20001110|14|1212.31|92.74|126.77|36.37|65.61|0.00|1533.80
20001110|15|11186.17|1190.07|1082.30|335.59|74.04|0.00|13868.17
20001110|16|416.00|31.82|4.39|12.48|32.43|0.00|497.12
20001110|~~~~~|15102.65|1553.06|1341.51|453.09|214.58|0.00|18664.89
~~~~~~~|~~~~~|15102.65|1553.06|1341.51|453.09|214.58|0.00|18664.89
################### cut here ###################

Instead, the data comes out as passed to sort.

Please help !

Thanks.

-- kjh ( address@hidden )