Re: sort feature requests

[Matthew Woehlke]

Jim Meyering wrote:
> Matthew Woehlke <address@hidden> wrote:
> > This should already be possible with a command such as:
> > $ ( sed 1q ; sort [args] ) < [file]
> >
> > ...however it seems my version of sed (4.1.2-RH4) does not honor POSIX
> > semantics and consumes too much of the input ('head' from
> > coreutils-6.9 seems to have the same problem?) I did get 'read 4 ;
> > echo $a' to work however.
> >
> > (Ok gnulib folks, I don't have any dates handy, is the fseek stuff
> > newer than coreutils-6.9?)
>
> Using head works for me, both with coreutils-5.97
> and the very latest 6.9+:
>
>     $ (echo 5; seq 3) > k; (head -1; sort -n) < k
>     5
>     1
>     2
>     3
>
> If you're reporting a bug, please be specific.

Maybe I am being brain-dead... This does not work with 6.9:

$ seq 5 | ( head -1 ; sort -n )

...but now I forget if pipes are seekable (I want to say "no" actually), 
so maybe PEBKAC?

Works fine if the input is a file.

--
Matthew
"...anyway, that's my 0.02 toasters"
(with apologies to Niel)