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Date: Sat, 25 Jan 2014 15:13:37 +0100
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To: Shayan Pooya <shayan@liveve.org>, freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
Subject: Re: Field delimiter in sort program in freebsd
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On 2014-01-25 14:59, Shayan Pooya wrote:
> Hello,
>
> How can I use the ascii character 0xff as the field delimiter for the
> FreeBSD sort program?
> On bash on Linux I use the following:
> $ sort -t $'\xff' -z
> to sort a set of null terminated lines where each field is separated by a
> \xff.
>
> The FreeBSD 10 manual page says it has the -t option, but I am not sure how
> I should give it the option to use a specific character.
>
> On tcsh:
> % sort -t $'\xff'
> Illegal variable name.

$ is a variable, and you have not defined it.
$ by it self means the first word on the line ie sort.

So your line expands to: $ sort -t sort'\xff'

NB I AM NOT A PROGRAMMER!