[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]
bug#18073: defect with sort multiple arguments
From: |
Eric Blake |
Subject: |
bug#18073: defect with sort multiple arguments |
Date: |
Tue, 22 Jul 2014 10:44:40 -0600 |
User-agent: |
Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:24.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/24.6.0 |
[re-adding the bug, with permission]
On 07/22/2014 10:14 AM, n buckner wrote:
> Sorry didn't see this at the bottom of the manpage. info coreutils 'sort
> invocation'
>
> The manpage is kind of misleading because it does not convey that at all.
>
> -n, --numeric-sort
> compare according to string numerical value
>
> -u, --unique
> with -c, check for strict ordering; without -c, output only
> the first of an equal run
>
>
If you think we can improve the documentation, to make it more obvious
that -u only covers uniqueness between keys, and that -n stops a key at
the first non-numeric character, suggestions are welcome. Remember that
the man page is generated from the --help text, and that those are
supposed to be consise; but the info page should definitely go into more
detail. And in fact, I see this in the info page:
The commands 'sort -u' and 'sort | uniq' are equivalent, but this
equivalence does not extend to arbitrary 'sort' options. For
example, 'sort -n -u' inspects only the value of the initial
numeric string when checking for uniqueness, whereas 'sort -n |
uniq' inspects the entire line. *Note uniq invocation::.
which is _exactly_ what you filed this bug report about.
--
Eric Blake eblake redhat com +1-919-301-3266
Libvirt virtualization library http://libvirt.org
signature.asc
Description: OpenPGP digital signature