tag 11900 + notabug close 11900 stop On 07/10/2012 08:42 AM, j...@smartots.com wrote: > echo -e "1 qFeb\n1 qJan" | sort -k2.2,2.5M
Yep that's a tricky one, but specified by POSIX. --debug is very useful here... $ echo -e "1 qFeb\n1 qJan" | sort --debug -k2.2,2.5M sort: using ‘en_US.utf8’ sorting rules sort: leading blanks are significant in key 1; consider also specifying 'b' 1 qFeb ^ no match for key ______ 1 qJan ^ no match for key ______ Now you might think you can just specify -b, but... $ echo -e "1 qFeb\n1 qJan" | sort --debug -b -k2.2,2.5M sort: using ‘en_US.utf8’ sorting rules sort: leading blanks are significant in key 1; consider also specifying 'b' sort: option '-b' is ignored 1 qFeb ^ no match for key ______ 1 qJan ^ no match for key ______ So you might then think you could add 'b' to the full key, but... $ echo -e "1 qFeb\n1 qJan" | sort --debug -b -k2.2,2.5Mb sort: using ‘en_US.utf8’ sorting rules sort: leading blanks are significant in key 1; consider also specifying 'b' 1 qFeb ^ no match for key ______ 1 qJan ^ no match for key ______ So what you really need to do is: $ echo -e "1 qFeb\n1 qJan" | sort --debug -k2.2b,2.5Mb sort: using ‘en_US.utf8’ sorting rules 1 qJan ___ ______ 1 qFeb ___ ______ cheers, Pádraig.
