bug#58476: buggy version sort

[Pádraig Brady]

On 12/10/2022 22:07, Vincent Lefevre wrote:
> A regression in version sort (used as the natural sort for "ls")
> has been introduced from coreutils 8.32 to 9.1:
>
> With coreutils 8.32 (Debian 11):
>
> $ printf "%s\n" a a0 a1 a.b a0.b a1.b | sort -V
> a
> a.b
> a0
> a0.b
> a1
> a1.b
>
> With coreutils 9.1 (Debian/unstable):
>
> $ printf "%s\n" a a0 a1 a.b a0.b a1.b | sort -V
> a
> a0
> a0.b
> a.b
> a1
> a1.b
>
> This is now completely illogical.

This looks to be the same point as discussed in https://bugs.gnu.org/58153
where a trailing '0' is essentially ignored when sorting,
as per the debian version sorting spec.

This is surprising, and perhaps we should diverge from the spec
in this regard, but I'm not sure.

thanks,
Pádraig