The example below exhibits a bug in "sort (GNU textutils) 2.0a" as available in "Red Hat Linux release 6.2 (Zoot)" running on a K7 processor. The example appears to work fine in "Red Hat Linux release 6.1 (Cartman)" where the relevant command is "sort (GNU textutils) 2.0". The underlying processor was a K6. Hoping this information is useful, John Abbott. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- EXAMPLE: the output of the sort command is the same as its input... cat > file <<EOF 1 2 1 EOF sort -n file