question regarding sorting

[James O'Rourke]

I am having strange behaviour experimenting with the example solr  
server. Via the tutorial - except I set up my own schema. Anyway,  
here's the issue - if I provide the explicit "sort" param in my  
request, the sort does not seem to execute, however if I have the  
encoded sort via using "; field desc" for example, sorting does work.  
Is this expected behaviour? Is there something I'm missing.

Eg;
This does not sort:

http://localhost:8983/solr/select/?indent=on&q=24&sort=lastmodified% 
20desc&fl=uniquekey,lastmodified

This does:

http://localhost:8983/solr/select/?indent=on&q=24;%20lastmodified% 
20asc&fl=uniquekey,lastmodified

Anyone know why?

James