Bug 901517

Summary:	is not this sorting incorrect?
Product:	[Fedora] Fedora	Reporter:	Ales Ledvinka <aledvink>
Component:	coreutils	Assignee:	Ondrej Vasik <ovasik>
Status:	CLOSED NOTABUG	QA Contact:	Fedora Extras Quality Assurance <extras-qa>
Severity:	unspecified	Docs Contact:
Priority:	unspecified
Version:	18	CC:	admiller, kdudka, kzak, ovasik, pbrady, p, tsmetana, twaugh
Target Milestone:	---
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Hardware:	Unspecified
OS:	Unspecified
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Fixed In Version:		Doc Type:	Bug Fix
Doc Text:		Story Points:	---
Clone Of:		Environment:
Last Closed:	2013-01-18 16:38:55 UTC	Type:	Bug
Regression:	---	Mount Type:	---
Documentation:	---	CRM:
Verified Versions:		Category:	---
oVirt Team:	---	RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
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Embargoed:

Description Ales Ledvinka 2013-01-18 11:32:18 UTC

Is not the sort broken or did I miss some option?

Below is the patch file. The update was generated by a script. Though I can not guarantee that the original file from several months or years ago was generated by the same script but it seems it might be.

I tried to use different sort options and combine that with either field separator ":" or no separator option but was unable to produce the original sorting order to reduce the patch size. The new sort order seems to be rather incorrect to move the 0:0:1 past 0:0:1f on numeric sort on both field separator : or no separator.

diff -up ./ethercodes.dat.orig ./ethercodes.dat
--- ./ethercodes.dat.orig       2013-01-18 11:31:10.998394976 +0100
+++ ./ethercodes.dat    2013-01-18 11:45:28.466851677 +0100
@@ -1,5 +1,4 @@
 0:0:0  XEROX CORPORATION
-0:0:1  XEROX CORPORATION
 0:0:10 SYTEK INC.
 0:0:11 NORMEREL SYSTEMES
 0:0:12 INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY LIMITED
@@ -16,7 +15,7 @@
 0:0:1d CABLETRON SYSTEMS, INC.
 0:0:1e TELSIST INDUSTRIA ELECTRONICA
 0:0:1f Telco Systems, Inc.
-0:0:2  XEROX CORPORATION
+0:0:1  XEROX CORPORATION
 0:0:20 DATAINDUSTRIER DIAB AB
 0:0:21 SUREMAN COMP. & COMMUN. CORP.
 0:0:22 VISUAL TECHNOLOGY INC.
@@ -33,7 +32,7 @@
 0:0:2d CHROMATICS INC
 0:0:2e SOCIETE EVIRA
 0:0:2f TIMEPLEX INC.
-0:0:3  XEROX CORPORATION
+0:0:2  XEROX CORPORATION
 0:0:30 VG LABORATORY SYSTEMS LTD
 0:0:31 QPSX COMMUNICATIONS PTY LTD
 0:0:32 Marconi plc

Comment 1 Pádraig Brady 2013-01-18 12:04:08 UTC

sounds like a locale issue.
Try with: LC_ALL=C sort ...

Note sorting variable width hex is not directly supported by sort unfortunately

Comment 2 Ondrej Vasik 2013-01-18 16:38:55 UTC

It would be better to have the original files rather than the patch, still, I don't see a bug in sort here. As Pádraig said, locales influence the sorting order.