It's actually sorting correctly, if a period '.' comes after letters of the alphabet. In your example, 'b' precedes '.', so ab.a is first. And 'c' precedes 'z', so the rest is correct.
We all agree 'a' comes before 'b', but does 'a' come before '.' ? This depends on the locale, and specifically on LC_COLLATE. For example: ---snip--- $ export LC_COLLATE=en_US $ sort sample ab.a a.c a.z $ export LC_COLLATE=C $ sort sample a.c a.z ab.a ---snip--- -David Reg. Charney wrote: >I believe that sort in coreutils v5.2.1 has a basic bug in it - it seems to treat the >period (.) as a non-existant character. Here is an example: > >$cat sample >a.z >ab.a >a.c > >$sort sample >ab.a >a.c >a.z > >This would be correct if we were to ignore the periods - the sort order would be aba, >ac, az. I believe the order should be a.c, a.z, ab.a > >Reg. Charney > > _______________________________________________ Bug-coreutils mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/bug-coreutils
