Matthew Woehlke <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > Paul Eggert wrote: >> Matthew Woehlke writes: >>> '-N _options_, --numeric-sort=_options_' >> The other sort options can be attached to -k; how would this work >> here? > > Sorry, I'm not sure I understand what you mean by this comment. What > would be attached to -k, and how?
For example, "sort -k2,2n -k3,3g" says sort numerically in column 2, breaking ties with a general numeric sort in column 3. >>> 'a': convert numbers with strtol(,0) (i.e. automatically recognize >>> '0x<num>' (hex), '0<num>' (octal). >>> 'o': all numbers are octal, i.e. strtol(,8) >>> 'x': all numbers are hexadecimal, i.e. strtol(,16) >> These shouldn't use strtol; they should work regardless of the size >> of the number, just as it already works for decimal numbers. > > I was actually wondering about that... from the info page it sounded > like strtod is actually used, It is, for -g. But strtol is not used for ordinary numeric sort. Ideally, we wouldn't use strtod even for -g. We would do exact comparison, so that, e.g., 1.0000000000000000000000000000000000000000001 would compare greater than 1.0 (as it already does for -n). That would be some more work, but it shouldn't be _that_ much work. > (I guess this means you would always convert numbers to [long] > doubles?) No, you compare the strings directly, without converting to integer or double. That is how the existing code works for -n. > do you think these would be good ideas? Yes, it sounds reasonable. However, a patch like that would be a nontrivial change, so we'd need copyright papers from you in order to install it. Have you started the ball rolling on this? If not, please contact me privately. _______________________________________________ Bug-coreutils mailing list Bug-coreutils@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/bug-coreutils
