Originally Posted by Don Cragun

In post #1 you said that your input lines are terminated with 'CR', which I assume you meant to be a <carriage-return> character. But the sample file you uploaded (main.cf.txt) does not contain any <carriage-return> characters; instead it contains normal UNIX text files with lines terminated by <newline> characters.

Originally Posted by Don Cragun

In post #1 you showed us sample input data containing multiple adjacent lines starting with <tab>. In the file you uploaded, that never happens, but there are multiple occurrences of configuration lines followed by <tab>bed lines.

Originally Posted by Don Cragun

In post #1 you didn't mention anything about comment lines nor about empty lines that are not supposed to be sorted, but there are lines at the start of the file you uploaded that I assume are not intended to be sorted. (But, of course, that is a wild assumption because you have not really shown us what output should be produced by processing the file you uploaded.)
.....
......

You also mention in post #1:
but there aren't any <tab> characters in your example in post #1 and there aren't any leading <space> characters in the file you uploaded.

Assuming that you want all lines

..............
.......
With the sample data you uploaded, this produces the output:


#####################################
# #
# {config_jcd} #
# #
# /etc/postfix/main.cf
# #
# /etc/postfix/main.cf.lst.sort sort no comments
# #
# INSTALL VERSION #
# #
# §2018_06_15§ #
# #
# ¨version:27-0-0¨ #
# #
# ɸmodif_version:0-0-1ɸ #
# #
#####################################

alias_maps =
biff = no
canonical_maps =
command_directory = /usr/sbin
compatibility_level = 2
.................
.................
.........