there appears to be a bug in the sort program.
after inspection of the 23 meg file that i found the problem in, it looks like all the records with a single digit for key 2 are sorted first and then all the records with two digits for key 2, etc. it also looks like there is a problem when you sort on the last key in the line (hence the 'test' field) but i didn't document or test that one much. fwiw, sort -t , tiny_in -n -b -d -k 2 -k 3 -k 4 -k 5 sorts fine, but only because the keys are in order... i built a shell script that demonstrates the problem: echo > bug.txt export LANG="" echo \$LANG=$LANG >> bug.txt export LC_ALL=POSIX echo \$LC_ALL=$LC_ALL >> bug.txt echo >> bug.txt uname -a >> bug.txt echo >> bug.txt sort --version >> bug.txt echo >> bug.txt echo "input file:" >> bug.txt cat tiny_in >> bug.txt echo >> bug.txt echo "sort command: sort -t , tiny_in -k 2nbd,2nbd -k 3nbd,3nbd -k 4nbd,4nbd -k 5nbd,5nbd" >> bug.txt echo >> bug.txt echo "output:" >> bug.txt sort -t , tiny_in -k 2nbd,2nbd -k 3nbd,3nbd -k 4nbd,4nbd -k 5nbd,5nbd >> bug.txt i ran it and got the following output: $LANG= $LC_ALL=POSIX Linux davos.i-link.net 2.2.14-5.0smp #1 SMP Tue Mar 7 21:01:40 EST 2000 i686 unknown sort (GNU textutils) 2.0a 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. input file: 3,20020109184710,30,2405,94,test 3,20020109232651,1,2430,14,test sort command: sort -t , tiny_in -k 2nbd,2nbd -k 3nbd,3nbd -k 4nbd,4nbd -k 5nbd,5nbd output: 3,20020109232651,1,2430,14,test 3,20020109184710,30,2405,94,test thanks, bill [EMAIL PROTECTED] _______________________________________________ Bug-textutils mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/bug-textutils