UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

cat a
.a
ba
.b
bb
.c
bc

sort a
.a
.b
ba
bb
bc
.c

NOTE: .a and .b appears before ba and bb, where as .c appears after bc.

In general

if the file has strings of the type .<x> and <y><x>,

then for all x <= y, .x appear before yx and
for all x>y, .x appear after yx

Is this a bug or an expected behavior? It latter is the case, then what is the explanation?

What distribution you are using ?

In solaris, i get the below output

Code:

 
$ sort test
.a
.b
.c
ba
bb
bc
bash-3.00$ cat test 
.a
ba
.b
bb
.c
bc

There are some environemntvariables that influence sorting, LANG and LC_ALL beeing the ones that are used most often.

Code:

$ cat mytext.txt
.a
ba
.b
bb
.c
bc
$ unset LC_ALL
$ sort mytext.txt
.a
.b
ba
bb
bc
.c
$ export LC_ALL=C
$ sort mytext.txt
.a
.b
.c
ba
bb
bc

... with LC_COLLATE being the most specific.

Regards,
Alister