Just to clarify, the text file created on the sun computer was created by hand (ie typed out) simply to test some of the routines. The original full text files are station lists that are obtained by copying and pasting from a web browser into a text file. In the past, on the sun system, this had never been a problem. After I scp'd the files from the sun system to the linux system, the sort command no longer parsed them the same way.

I've scp'd the file from the sun computer (generated there) to the linux computer, and ran the sort, but it still produces the same incorrect output. As far as I know, there is no copy and paste going on now.

Code:

$ sort --version
sort (GNU coreutils) 7.4
Copyright (C) 2009 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <http://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>.
This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.
There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.

Written by Mike Haertel and Paul Eggert.

I can't imagine that this is caused by the difference between GNU 7.4 and 7.5.

Thanks!

---------- Post updated 08-19-10 at 11:36 AM ---------- Previous update was 08-18-10 at 11:10 PM ----------

I have manged to get this figured out now, after coming across the following post: sort (GNU coreutils) 7.4 not sorting in ascii order (asked and answered)..

My LC_COLLATE environment variable was set to "en_IE.utf8". I set that instead as "C", for POSIX ASCII sort as in Unix environments, and the sort command now works as I would expect on my input file.

Thanks for your help!