Hi, On Wed, May 27, 2020 at 02:07:32PM +0200, Danie de Jager via GNU coreutils Bug Reports wrote: > I use sort -Vr to sort version numbers. I noticed this discrepancy on > the latest kernel version from Centos 7.8. > > command to get output: > # ls -t /boot/vmlinuz-* | sed "s/\/boot\/vmlinuz-//g" | grep -v rescue > | sort -Vr > 3.10.0-1127.el7.x86_64 > 3.10.0-1127.8.2.el7.x86_64 > 3.10.0-1062.18.1.el7.x86_64 > > I'd expect the middle value to be the highest version number. Is this > by design or a bug? If it is a bug please let me know if I must log it > somewhere.
I'd say this is by design: Sorting compares runs of non-digits, then runs of digits. Thus each "dot" (.) terminates a run of digits. The "problem" is an unbalanced number of digit and non-digit runs in the version numbers. See the following two manual sections: http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/coreutils.html#Version_002dsort-ordering-rules http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/coreutils.html#Punctuation-Characters The "version sort" is based on Debian's version sort (but different). It seems as if Red Hat version numbers follow different rules. HTH, Erik -- Be water, my friend. -- Bruce Lee
