I discovered a behaviour of "sort" that looks like a bug to me. When
one key in the input is an initial part of another key, the shorter
key is sorted first if the key is all there is on the line. But if
there are other fields too, not included in the key, the order
changes. That is true even with the --stable flag, so "sort" seems to
consider the order of the keys different in the two cases.
I sort in a non-C locale. sv_SE.utf8 actually, but en_US.utf8 behaves
the same so I illustrate using that.
First case, the key is all there is on the line. The shorter line
gets sorted earlier, regardless of input order:
[göran@mimmi Hämtat]$ { echo 'binutils x86_64'; echo
'binutils-x86_64-linux-gnu x86_64'; } | LANG=en_US.utf8 sort --stable --debug
--key=1,1 --field-separator=!
sort: using ‘en_US.utf8’ sorting rules
binutils x86_64
_______________
binutils-x86_64-linux-gnu x86_64
________________________________
[göran@mimmi Hämtat]$ { echo 'binutils-x86_64-linux-gnu x86_64'; echo
'binutils x86_64'; } | LANG=en_US.utf8 sort --stable --debug --key=1,1
--field-separator=!
sort: using ‘en_US.utf8’ sorting rules
binutils x86_64
_______________
binutils-x86_64-linux-gnu x86_64
________________________________
Second case, the input lines contains a second field. Now the longer
field gets sorted earlier, regardless of input order:
[göran@mimmi Hämtat]$ { echo 'binutils x86_64!new'; echo
'binutils-x86_64-linux-gnu x86_64!new'; } | LANG=en_US.utf8 sort --stable
--debug --key=1,1 --field-separator=!
sort: using ‘en_US.utf8’ sorting rules
binutils-x86_64-linux-gnu x86_64!new
________________________________
binutils x86_64!new
_______________
[göran@mimmi Hämtat]$ { echo 'binutils-x86_64-linux-gnu x86_64!new'; echo
'binutils x86_64!new'; } | LANG=en_US.utf8 sort --stable --debug --key=1,1
--field-separator=!
sort: using ‘en_US.utf8’ sorting rules
binutils-x86_64-linux-gnu x86_64!new
________________________________
binutils x86_64!new
_______________
I can't see any reason for this. Is it me not understanding sorting,
or is it actually a bug?
