Re: question on using the -n option for sorting

[Pádraig Brady]

On 03/11/2024 01:48, American Citizen wrote:
> Hello:
>
> I am a number theory mathematician, using linux as a computer platform
> for my studies.
>
> In using the sort command with the -n option, such as the command
>
> %sort -k3,3n close.2 > close.3
>
> I noticed that the 93 digits in the 3rd field are NOT numerically
> ordered, although most were.
>
> I switched to the dictionary order
>
> %sort -k3,3 close.2 > close.3
>
> and then close.3 seems to be in the correct numerical sequence in field 3.
>
> Can anyone share with me how many digits the -n option can safely sort?
> Can we do decimals > 17 digits with this option? Can sort be
> strengthened to handle digits > 17 ?
>
> Thank you for letting me know. I attach a short 100 line sample file
> which was extracted from the 29,984 line actual close.2 file.
>
> Randall

I'm not seeing the issue with sort 9.4 at least.
Stripping the insignificant leading zeros I can more easily
see the correct sorting being applied:

  cut -f3 example.sort | sed 's/^0*//' | sort -n

What version of sort(1) are you using?

In any case, GNU `sort -n` does not convert numbers to machine representation,
so can sort numbers of arbitrary width.

thanks,
Pádraig