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

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