Package: coreutils
Given that the forwarded mail did not reach the bug-coreutils mailing list and
that http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-coreutils/2016-05/msg00030.html
contains:
| I did something very similar in parallel, but somehow the email didn't
| reach the list:
this silly bug-coreutils thing seems to have some issues …
Anyway, the description of the option -n in sort(1) is at best
incomplete, see forwarded mail:
----- Forwarded message from Carsten Hey <cars...@debian.org> -----
Date: Sat, 14 May 2016 16:17:35 +0200
From: Carsten Hey <cars...@debian.org>
To: bug-coreut...@gnu.org
Subject: sort(1): misleading description of option -n
Hi,
the man page sort(1) contains a misleading description of the option -n:
$ lsb_release -ic
Distributor ID: Debian
Codename: jessie
$ sort --version | sed -n 1p
sort (GNU coreutils) 8.23
$ man sort | grep -A1 -- --numeric-sort | sed -n -e 's/^ *//' -e '1!p'
compare according to string numerical value
According to Ubuntu's web page, this string is also in their package
coreutils_8.25-2ubuntu2_i386.
This description reads as if this command:
$ printf '%s\n' 'x 9' 'x 10' | sort -n
x 10
x 9
… would produce the output of this command:
$ printf '%s\n' 'x 9' 'x 10' | sort -V
x 9
x 10
…, but instead, -n stops doing its magic after finding the first
non-numeric, non-whitespace character. There is a short and simple
way to summarize this behaviour.
If you use Cyanogenmod on your mobile phone, you carry a minor
programming error in your pocket that is very likely caused by this
misleading description of -n.
Regards
Carsten
----- End forwarded message -----
