unless one add -e to the ctags command line (emacs compatibility mode)
I had no problem using the regular 'tags' file produced by ctags with vim. However, the TAGS file produced for emacs via the '-e' option worked as well. This is ctags 3.2, included in 6.0 and later.
I have the same trouble. I'm on RH 6.1 with vim 5.4 and ctags-3.2-1. The problem goes away when I do: :set notagbsearch or when I generate the tags file outside of vim with the -e option. Since other bug reports seem to indicate that sort has changed recently to be POSIX compliant, perhaps vim expects the sorting one way while the new `sort' sorts another? The question then would be: Can I configure vim to call `sort' with the right backwards compatible options?