On Thu, 4 Feb 2010 16:21:23 -0800, Richard Schuh wrote: >I may be a little dense, but how does this >> >> ... | sort -4 -3 -2 -1 | ... >> >Differ from ... | sort -4;-1 |...?
Consider a record shorter than 4 characters. -4;-1 starts with the first character of the record. -4 -3 -2 -1 starts with an empty field, which will always sort to the top. Here's an example: pipe literal 20 40 3 100|split|sort -3;-1|cons 100 20 3 40 Ready; pipe literal 20 40 3 100|split|sort -3 -2 -1|cons 3 20 40 100 Ready; ¬R