PS. I just read a conversation linked on Pádraig's site as a 'TODO'. http://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=15157 GNU bug report logs - #15157 join doesn't follow norms and dies instead of doing something useful w/duplicate options
While I'm not sure, it seems that this might be a related conversation -- regarding command-line specified arguments overriding environment settings. I read pieces from that exchange but I couldn't determine if the todo is to allow the command-like specified field-separator to override settings in LC_* or not. Thank you. On Tuesday, October 8, 2013 at 6:10 PM, Gabriel Gaster wrote: > Thank you both very much for your detailed responses. I've responded below. > > I would also like to ask that an example calling attention to this be put in > the man pages. While the warning to use LC_ALL=C that is already there is > helpful -- an explicit example that shows numeric sort acting differently > would shed more light on this. > > -- > gabriel gaster > > > On Tuesday, October 8, 2013, Pádraig Brady wrote: > > Also note that while some of the sort funcionality is awkward, > > it's done like that for backwards and cross compatibility reasons. > > > > > That makes sense. I suppose you mean in particular that sort relies on tables > specified by the locale? > > On Tuesday, October 8, 2013, Eric Blake wrote: > > Yes, it's a FAQ: > > https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/faq/coreutils-faq.html#Sort-does-not-sort-in-normal-order_0021 > > and sort is doing what POSIX behaves for your particular machine's > > definitions of locales, and in turn their description of how collation > > and numeric parsing will perform in that locale. Except for the C > > locale, different vendors have tended to have different rules, even for > > > > locales that are otherwise named the same. > > > Thanks for the FAQ, which I found very helpful. Then the question in my mind > remains: if a user specifies a field-separator shouldn't that override the > locale? In this case, `en_US.UTF-8' allows the comma character in numerics, > however specifying that the comma character is a field-separator should mean > it does not allow the comma in numerics. > > It seems that the locale overrides specific arguments to sort (in this case, > field-separator=, ). From the FAQ, I understand this might be necessarily so, > given how sort is implemented with reference to the locale tables. Still > though, why isn't sort faithful to an argument given to it?
