a strange message when executing the sort command

marwan · #1 (**permalink**) 04-25-2007

Dear all,
when I issue the command:
gunzip -c file.gz |sort
the command is executed normally and correctly but a message keeps appearing everytime I run the command:

the message:
sort: missing NEWLINE added at end of input file STDIN

Does anyone know what is the meaning of this message?
Thanks in advance

zazzybob · #2 (**permalink**) 04-25-2007

It's doing exactly what it says - it's adding a newline to the end of your input file as one isn't there, e.g.

Code:

$ echo -n "foo" | sort
sort: warning: missing NEWLINE added at EOF
foo
$ echo "foo" | sort
foo

You can suppress this benign message by redirecting STDERR to /dev/null, or by appending a newline to your input file, e.g.:

Code:

$ ( gzip -dc ./file.gz; echo ) | sort
-or-
$ gzip -dc ./file.gz | sort 2>/dev/null

You can verify that the last line of your input file doesn't contain a newline with:

Code:

$ gzip -dc ./file.gz | tail -1 | od -c

Cheers,
ZB

marwan · #3 (**permalink**) 04-27-2007

Dear Zazzybob,
thanks so much for the information, but i am so new to unix, and I can't completely follow up with u. I need to understand the source of the problem, that is why the sort command is adding a new line at the end of the file.
and when i execute the command : gunzip -c file.gz |tail -1 , the result is the last two lines, not the last line only.
Thanks

jim mcnamara · #4 (**permalink**) 04-27-2007

Unix files that us humans consider text, use ASCII 10 for carriage control - it's called a newline character.

Unzip the file.
Open the file in an editor, go to the end of the very last line and hit the return key on the keyboard. That will add a newline (\n) to the end of the file. Save the changed file. Re-zip it.

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