On 07/30/2013 04:33 PM, Eric Blake wrote: > It SOUNDS like you are merely asking for a stable sort option. Have you > tried the -s/--stable option? That effectively adds an invisible key of > last resort that says if two lines otherwise compare equal, sort them so > that the line occurring first in input also occurs first in output.
An alternative view of how -s works (that more closely matches what you will see in 'sort --debug' output) is that POSIX requires that 'sort' behave as if a key of -k1 were always the last key present (if two lines otherwise compare equal, sort them by a strcoll() comparison of the entire line), where -s is the GNU extension that disables this POSIX implicit full-line sort key, so that you are left with a stable sort. Since 'adding an option to remove a key' sounds a little fishy on the surface, you can see why I gave my first explanation instead. But at the end of the day, all that matters is the result, so pick whichever mental representation you find easier to understand :) -- Eric Blake eblake redhat com +1-919-301-3266 Libvirt virtualization library http://libvirt.org
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