Bastian Fuchs wrote: > maybe I don't understand the manpage, because my english isn't very > good. But I think that the manpage says that -k1,1 and -k1 is the > same ... but it isn't.
Thank you for your very nice test case. It is most appreciated. > [bastiaf:~]% mkdir a > [bastiaf:~]% cd a > [bastiaf:~/a]% touch a > [bastiaf:~/a]% ln a b > [bastiaf:~/a]% ln a c > [bastiaf:~/a]% ls -liA | sort -uk1 > 378446 -rw-r----- 3 bastiaf bastiaf 0 Oct 23 21:59 a > 378446 -rw-r----- 3 bastiaf bastiaf 0 Oct 23 21:59 b > 378446 -rw-r----- 3 bastiaf bastiaf 0 Oct 23 21:59 c > total 0 > [bastiaf:~/a]% ls -liA | sort -uk1,1 > 378446 -rw-r----- 3 bastiaf bastiaf 0 Oct 23 21:59 a > total 0 > [bastiaf:~/a]% I see that same behavior. > Manpage: > -k, --key=POS1[,POS2] > start a key at POS1, end it at POS 2 (origin 1) The man page is really only meant as a quick reference. It is generated automatically from the 'sort --help' output using help2man to create the man page. As such it is terse by design. The info page contains more information and should be considered the better reference for these things. info sort `-k POS1[,POS2]' The recommended, POSIX, option for specifying a sort field. The field consists of the part of the line between POS1 and POS2 (or the end of the line, if POS2 is omitted), _inclusive_. Fields and character positions are numbered starting with 1. So to sort on the second field, you'd use `-k 2,2' See below for more examples. So sort -k1 starts the key at the field indicated and continues the key to the end of line since POS2 is omitted. In your example the lines different at the last character. In -k1,1 my reading of this is that it starts the sort key at field one and stops the sort key at field one. The rest of the line will not be considered when sorting. Since field one is the same the sort uniquely operation collapses them. But I did not actually look at the code. As always if you have contributions or patches for the documentation please suggest them. Much of the documentation needs improvement and would benefit from help. Bob _______________________________________________ Bug-textutils mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/bug-textutils