The -g and -h options of 'sort' are indeed incompatible; they result in different outputs.
More generally, these bug reports reargue the 'grep' bug reported here: http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-grep/2013-08/msg00017.html and replied to here: http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-grep/2013-08/msg00018.html Generally speaking, the GNU utilities follow the POSIX utility syntax guidelines, in particular Guideline 11: The order of different options relative to one another should not matter, unless the options are documented as mutually-exclusive and such an option is documented to override any incompatible options preceding it. http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/basedefs/V1_chap12.html#tag_12_02 It sounds like you're disputing the main part of this guideline and are advocating always taking the second (exceptional) part. It's not clear to me that this makes sense, and there are good arguments for sticking with the more-cautious approach.
