asort(1)						      General Commands Manual							  asort(1)

NAME

       asort - Sorts or merges files and supports multiple collating weight sequences

SYNOPSIS

       asort  [-m]  [-o output_file]  [-Abdfinruv]  [-Ccollate_sequence]  [-k  keydef]...  [-t	character]  [-T  directory]  [-y]  [kilobytes] [-z
       record_size]... file...

       asort -c  [-u] [-Abdfinruv] [-Ccollate_sequence] [-k keydef]... [-t character] [-T directory] [-y] [kilobytes] [-z record_size]...  file...

       The following syntax is maintained for backward compatibility but may be withdrawn  in  a  future  release:  asort  [-Abcdfimnruv]  [-Ccol-
       late_sequence]  [-o  output_file]  [-t  character]  [-T	directory]  [-y]  [kilobytes] [-z record_size] [+fskip] [.cskip] [-fskip] [.cskip]
       [-bdfinr]... file...

OPTIONS

       The asort command includes the same options as the sort command (see sort(1)) in addition to the following options: Specifies the collating
       weight  sequence  to  be used in sorting the data files.  When this option is specified, the asort command does not use the collating table
       from the locale database.  Instead, the command uses a set of special system and user collating tables to determine the	collating  weights
       of characters, including user-defined characters (UDCs).

	      The collate_sequence argument can be in long form (for example, "Pinyin Radical Stroke") or short form (for example, prs). The code-
	      set of the locale determines which collation weight names can be specified for collate_sequence. The following  list  specifies  the
	      long and short collation weight names that are valid for supported codesets.

	      For DEC Hanzi:

	      Pinyon (or p) Radical (or r) Stroke (or s) For DEC Hanyu, Taiwanese EUC, and BIG-5:

	      Phonetic	(or p) Radical (or r) Stroke (or s) Uses a breadth-first sorting mechanism instead of the default depth-first mechanism to
	      sort the input data.  To have any effect, the -v option must be used together with the -C option.

DESCRIPTION

       The asort command sorts lines in its input files and writes the result to standard output.  The asort command is similar to the	sort  com-
       mand. See the sort(1) reference page for information about features the two commands have in common.

       The  asort  command provides additional features for processing multiple collating weight sequences used with Asian languages, such as Chi-
       nese.  For example, pinyon (p), stroke (s), and radical (r) are three dimensions along which characters can be ordered in  Simplified  Chi-
       nese.   The  -C	option allows users to specify the priority level that these dimensions have during sorting. For example, -C srp specifies
       that characters should be sorted first by stroke, then by radical, then by pinyon. The specified sequence is applied to user-defined  char-
       acters (UDCs) as well as to standard characters.

       When  the  -C  option  is  specified, the default behavior of the asort command is to use a depth-first sorting mechanism to sort the input
       files.  With the depth-first mechanism, pairs of multibyte characters in a sort field are compared by exhausting all the specified  collat-
       ing  weights and/or internal codes one at a time until the collating order is resolved.	Only when two characters are identical is the next
       pair of characters compared.  The depth-first sorting mechanism is also called character sorting.

       However, the asort command provides the -v option to use the Asian VMS-like breadth-first sorting mechanism.  With the breadth-first mecha-
       nism,  pairs of multibyte characters in a sort field are compared using the first collating weight for all the characters in the sort field
       first.  Only when two sets of data in a sort field are computed to have the same collating order are succeeding collating weights used  for
       resolving the collating order.  The breadth-first sorting mechanism is sometimes called string sorting.

NOTES

       Currently, the asort command is supported for use only with Chinese codesets.

EXIT STATUS

       The  asort  command returns the following exit values: All input files were output successfully, or -c was specified and the input file was
       correctly sorted.  If -c was specified, the file was not ordered as specified, or if the -c and -u options were both specified,	two  input
       lines were found with equal keys.  An error occurred.

EXAMPLES

       Unless  stated  otherwise, the following examples assume the locale setting is zh_TW.dechanyu: To perform character sorting first by stroke
       and then by radical, enter: asort -C"Stroke Radical" names

	      This command displays the lines in names sorted in ascending order according to the number of strokes in characters.  If the  number
	      of  strokes  happen  to  be  the same for two characters, the radicals of the characters determine how the characters are ordered.An
	      alternative short form of the same command is as follows: asort -Csr names To perform string sorting first by  stroke  and  then	by
	      radical in a way similar to the sort command available on an Asian VMS system, enter: asort -v -C"Stroke Radical" names

SEE ALSO

       Commands: sort(1)

       Functions: setlocale(3)

       Files: locale(4)

       Others: Chinese(5), i18n_intro(5)

																	  asort(1)