tag 12907 notabug thanks On 11/16/2012 11:06 AM, Coffey, Terrence (Terrence) **CTR** wrote: > Hi, > I think I might have located a bug. I'm using Redhat 6.3.
Thanks for the report. However, I suspect that you are hitting this FAQ, and not a bug in sort itself: https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/faq/#Sort-does-not-sort-in-normal-order_0021 Unfortunately, the 'sort' version shippted in RHEL 6.3 is too old to support the --debug option, but upgrading to a newer version will help shed some insight into your problems. > [WFUser@RHEL63TEMP3942 tmp]$ ls -Asl /tmp |sort -k11 -k7M -k8n -k9,10 As I don't have the same 'ls -Asl /tmp' output, I took your output and put in in a temp file of my own. Now, on that file, and with the sort 8.15 in Fedora 17, I get: $ LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8 sort --debug -k11 -k7M -k8n -k9,10 tmpfile sort: using `en_US.UTF-8' sorting rules sort: leading blanks are significant in key 1; consider also specifying `b' sort: key 3 is numeric and spans multiple fields sort: leading blanks are significant in key 4; consider also specifying `b' total 76 ^ no match for key ^ no match for key ^ no match for key ^ no match for key ________ 0 -rw-------. 1 root root 0 Nov 9 15:06 yum.log ^ no match for key ___ _ ______________ _______________________________________________________ 4 -r--r--r--. 1 root root 11 Nov 9 17:37 .X0-lock ^ no match for key ___ _ _______________ ________________________________________________________ ... Wow - just that much information is quite useful. You aren't sorting what you thought you were sorting. > > The filename is key 11 so I was expecting to see all the dot files group > together The filename is NOT field 11, but field 10 (fields start with 1, not 0). Furthermore, the debug option is warning you that unterminated -k specifications are risky; for example, it is better to use -k7,7M than -k7M. Also, it is warning you that -k11 includes leading space, which may affect the sort (depending on your locale). Paul already pointed out that your choice of locale may be important (en_US.UTF-8 typically does a dictionary sort, ignoring punctuation, but '.' is punctuation). > I'm try to get a listing of dot file sorted by date and all other files > sorted by date. I'd like all the dot file to appears before all other files. Here's something closer, but it still has a fatal flaw - the moment you request to sort by dot files first, you have specified that key takes priority over dates. $ LC_ALL=C sort -k10b -k7,7M -k8,8nb -k9,9 tmpfile total 76 4 drwxrwxrwt. 2 root root 4096 Nov 9 18:35 .ICE-unix 4 -r--r--r--. 1 root root 11 Nov 9 17:37 .X0-lock 4 drwxrwxrwt. 2 root root 4096 Nov 9 18:35 .X11-unix 4 -r--r--r--. 1 root root 11 Nov 9 18:35 .X2-lock 4 drwx------. 2 WFUser WFUser 4096 Nov 9 17:39 .esd-500 4 -rw-rw-r--. 1 WFUser WFUser 5 Nov 16 18:14 .tc 4 -rw-rw-r--. 1 WFUser WFUser 5 Nov 16 18:14 .tc2 4 -rw-rw-r--. 1 WFUser WFUser 5 Nov 16 18:18 .tc3 4 -rw-rw-r--. 1 WFUser WFUser 5 Nov 16 18:15 .tc4 4 drwx------. 2 root root 4096 Nov 9 18:35 keyring-kjLYun 4 drwx------. 2 WFUser WFUser 4096 Nov 9 17:39 keyring-nQ6lMb 4 drwx------. 2 WFUser WFUser 4096 Nov 9 18:20 orbit-WFUser 4 drwx------. 2 gdm gdm 4096 Nov 9 17:39 orbit-gdm 4 drwx------. 2 root root 4096 Nov 9 18:35 orbit-root 4 drwx------. 2 gdm gdm 4096 Nov 9 17:40 pulse-Jkx9hhtHj4dy 4 drwx------. 2 root root 4096 Nov 9 18:35 pulse-TSaTZvcbd1kc 4 drwx------. 2 WFUser WFUser 4096 Nov 9 17:39 pulse-g9SlRO3UEqGg 4 drwx------. 2 root root 4096 Nov 9 18:35 ssh-BRSEI10523 4 drwx------. 2 WFUser WFUser 4096 Nov 9 17:39 virtual-WFUser.AVmQkN 0 -rw-------. 1 root root 0 Nov 9 15:06 yum.log Really, the ONLY way you are going to sort two independent chunks of your list by date is to instead concatenate two independently sorted chunks, and realize that ls already does the date sorting that you desire. Perhaps you are really looking for: (set -f; ls -lsd --sort=date /tmp/.[!.] /tmp/.?*; ls -ls --sort=date /tmp) -- Eric Blake ebl...@redhat.com +1-919-301-3266 Libvirt virtualization library http://libvirt.org
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