unexpected result from gnu sort
- by funkycat
when I try to sort the following text file 'input':
test1 3
test3 2
test 4
with the command
sort input
the output is exactly the input. Here is the output of
od -bc input
:
0000000 164 145 163 164 061 011 063 012 164 145 163 164 063 011 062 012
t e s t 1 \t 3 \n t e s t 3 \t 2 \n
0000020 164 145 163 164 011 064 012
t e s t \t 4 \n
0000027
It's just a tab separated file with two columns. When I do
sort -k 2
The output changes to
test3 2
test1 3
test 4
which is what I would expect. But if I do
sort -k 1
nothing changes with respect to the input, whereas I would expect 'test' to sort before 'test1'. Finally, if I do
cat input | cut -f 1 | sort
I get
test
test1
test3
as expected. Is there a logical explanation for this? What exactly is sort supposed to do by default, something like:
sort -k 1
?
My version of sort:
sort (GNU coreutils) 7.4
