From owner-freebsd-hackers Tue Oct 22 15:40:11 1996 Return-Path: owner-hackers Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) id PAA11121 for hackers-outgoing; Tue, 22 Oct 1996 15:40:11 -0700 (PDT) Received: from seagull.rtd.com (root@seagull.rtd.com [198.102.68.2]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) with ESMTP id PAA11104 for ; Tue, 22 Oct 1996 15:40:05 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from dgy@localhost) by seagull.rtd.com (8.7.5/8.7.3) id PAA22269 for freebsd-hackers@freefall.cdrom.com; Tue, 22 Oct 1996 15:40:03 -0700 (MST) From: Don Yuniskis Message-Id: <199610222240.PAA22269@seagull.rtd.com> Subject: sort(1) bugs To: freebsd-hackers@freefall.FreeBSD.org (FreeBSD hackers) Date: Tue, 22 Oct 1996 15:40:03 -0700 (MST) X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk [stepping into asbestos underwear first...] Greetings! Sort chokes on 8bit chars. Well, let's just say it's not consistent in how it performs it's tests for which character comes first... In particular, `sort foo` will sort the contents of foo as if each character was unsigned. On the other hand, `sort +0f foo` gets preoccupied dealing with upper and lower case, etc. and forgets to treat the characters as unsigned. I started to hammer on the code but to clean it up *right* would require more time than I can spare at the moment [hence the asbestos underwear] -- considering the variety of "compare" options supported. I've checked with the FSF distribution and this behaviour is still present in their latest release (of textutils). If someone has a spare moment, this should be a no-brainer (and, obviously, I must have < no-brains! :>) Just FYI.. thanx! --don