I'm not sure where to post this but it's happening on a SunOS 5.8 server so I'll try here.

I've discovered some unexpected behavior when using tr.

For example:
echo a | tr [a-z] [A-Z]
Z

echo b | tr [a-z] [A-Z]
a

echo a | tr [a-b] [A-Z]
B

echo a | tr [a-b] [A-B]
B

echo a | tr [:lower:] [:upper:]
A

BUT! is you su to the same user you get the following behavior.

echo a | tr [a-z] [A-Z]
A

echo b | tr [a-z] [A-Z]
B

echo a | tr [a-b] [A-Z]
A

echo a | tr [a-b] [A-B]
A

echo a | tr [:lower:] [:upper:]
A


The tr was being used in a script where the normal way to run the script was to login as user A and then su to user B and run the script. But someone decided to run the script with out the su part and discovered this.

Any body have an explanation?

echo a | tr '[a-z]' '[A-Z]'

Same thing

echo a | tr '[a-z]' '[A-Z]'
Z

strange - works just fine on Solaris and FreeBSD.
do 'which tr' and see the path - your 'tr' might a script

I've got two SunOS 5.8 boxes that I use. I get this behavior on one box and not the other. On both boxes ll `which tr` returns
-r-xr-xr-x 1 root bin 14596 Jan 5 2000 /usr/xpg4/bin/tr

It's got me that's for sure.

dunno. take a look at your 'locale' on the 'bad' sun - your 'LC_*' environment variables should match to the 'good' sun.