RE: $(sort) - what is "lexical order"? (was RE: Follow-up)

[Martin Dorey]

> Why not trivially s/lexical/ASCII/ on the affected line in the manual?

Because that could mislead someone who uses non-ASCII characters?  How about:

Index: doc/make.texi
===================================================================
RCS file: /sources/make/make/doc/make.texi,v
retrieving revision 1.72
diff -u -r1.72 make.texi
--- doc/make.texi       2 May 2011 15:11:23 -0000       1.72
+++ doc/make.texi       19 Jul 2011 19:20:36 -0000
@@ -6846,6 +6846,8 @@
 
 @noindent
 returns the value @samp{bar foo lose}.
+Results are returned in the "C" locale's collation order,
+regardless of LC_COLLATE's value.
 
 @cindex removing duplicate words
 @cindex duplicate words, removing

-----Original Message-----
From: David Boyce [mailto:address@hidden 
Sent: Tuesday, July 19, 2011 12:09
To: address@hidden
Cc: Martin Dorey; address@hidden; address@hidden
Subject: Re: $(sort) - what is "lexical order"? (was RE: Follow-up)

On Tue, Jul 19, 2011 at 3:00 PM, Paul Smith <address@hidden> wrote:

> I agree that the manual should document the fact that the sort function
> does not sort according the current LC_COLLATE value but instead always
> uses the standard ASCII (or LC_COLLATE="C") order.
>
> But I will not say that it doesn't sort lexically, because that's not
> true: it does.

Agree completely, and add a note to the OP that the sort function has
an extremely important side effect of removing repeated words. Another
reason to keep it, if that was meant seriously.

Why not trivially s/lexical/ASCII/ on the affected line in the manual?
Lexical may be technically correct but ASCII is more precise.

David Boyce