My guess is that you're setting LANG to a value that is inconsistent with some other part of your locale (e.g., LC_CTYPE, LC_COLLATE). You can test this guess by running the command 'locale'. What does that command output?
- bug#12295: sort 5.97 vs. LANG (RHEL5) Lubos Kaspar
- bug#12295: sort 5.97 vs. LANG (RHEL5) Paul Eggert
- bug#12295: sort 5.97 vs. LANG (RHEL5) Pádraig Brady
