Re: bug in sort(1) ?

[Bob Proulx]

> $ cat /etc/issue
> Debian GNU 3.0 (Woody)

Thanks for the report.  If you had not mentioned Debian I would have
immediately jumped to the conclusion presented in this FAQ.  But
Debian does not set LANG by default without the user being informed of
it and you would be the first to have reported this problem on a
Debian based system.  And believe me a lot of people have reported
this required behavior as a problem!

  
http://www.gnu.org/software/fileutils/doc/faq/#Sort%20does%20not%20sorting%20in%20normal%20order!

> As you can see, sort 1.13 behaves correctly, while the newer 2.0 doesn't.

That really points to a locale problem.  What is the output of the
'locale' command in your environment?  This is what I see on my
Debian system.  None of these are set in my environment and so this is
showing the default.

  locale
  LANG=POSIX
  LC_CTYPE="POSIX"
  LC_NUMERIC="POSIX"
  LC_TIME="POSIX"
  LC_COLLATE="POSIX"
  LC_MONETARY="POSIX"
  LC_MESSAGES="POSIX"
  LC_PAPER="POSIX"
  LC_NAME="POSIX"
  LC_ADDRESS="POSIX"
  LC_TELEPHONE="POSIX"
  LC_MEASUREMENT="POSIX"
  LC_IDENTIFICATION="POSIX"
  LC_ALL=

Bob