Consider this test case, which performs identically with sort 5.96 (on Debian/alpha) and sort 5.2.1 (on SLES9/x86_64):
# cat << EOF > x.x one one two one two two one one EOF # sort -u -k1 x.x one one two one two two # sort -u -k1 -s x.x one one two one two two # Quoth POSIX: "-u Unique: suppress all but one in each set of lines having **EQUAL KEYS**." [Emphasis added] http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/000095399/utilities/sort.html This matches the info text provided by SuSE, while the Debian documentation is more vague. Because only a single key is specified, it seems obvious that the correct output from the last (stable) case must be: one one two one and that the first test case should return "one one" followed by exactly one of "two one" or "two two" (as both have identical keys and consequently only one can be selected). It appears the uniqueness test is applied to the entire data line, rather than only the specified keys as required by POSIX. In the meantime, my database loads keep bombing because my unique keys aren't. :-) Thanks, Scott Bailey [EMAIL PROTECTED] _______________________________________________ Bug-coreutils mailing list [email protected] http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/bug-coreutils
