Sorting scientific numbers with sort Post: 302944698

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Operating Systems OS X (Apple) Sorting scientific numbers with sort Post 302944698 by Scrutinizer on Thursday 21st of May 2015 10:46:21 AM

05-21-2015

Moderator

Quote:

Originally Posted by plebs

Hey everybody,

I'm trying to sort scientific numbers in a descending order using the command

Code:

sort -gr <file>

.

It works fine on a Linux-Server, but doesn't on my macbook pro with OS X 10.10.3 (Yosemite).
I tried to sort the following:

Code:

6.38e-10
6.38e-10
1.80e-11
1.00e-10
1.48e-12

And got this:

Code:

6.38e-10
6.38e-10
1.80e-11
1.48e-12
1.00e-10

Instead of this:

Code:

6.38e-10
6.38e-10
1.00e-10
1.80e-11
1.48e-12

Does anyone have an idea why mac is not recognizing the scientific notation despite the -g option?

Many thanks!

Strange, I cannot reproduce this on OSX 10.10.3 (Yosemite). Sort works as designed and it appears to be GNU sort:

Code:

$ sort -gr file
6.38e-10
6.38e-10
1.00e-10
1.80e-11
1.48e-12

$ sort -nr file
6.38e-10
6.38e-10
1.80e-11
1.48e-12
1.00e-10

$ sort --version
sort (GNU coreutils) 5.93
Copyright (C) 2005 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
This is free software.  You may redistribute copies of it under the terms of
the GNU General Public License <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>.
There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.

Written by Mike Haertel and Paul Eggert.

$ pkgutil --file-info  /usr/bin/sort
volume: /
path: /usr/bin/sort

pkgid: com.apple.pkg.BaseSystemBinaries
pkg-version: 10.10.0.1.1.1411459885
[..]

What happens when you enter:

Code:

type sort

Last edited by Scrutinizer; 05-21-2015 at 11:54 AM..

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