From: Jorge Stolfi <stolfi@ic.unicamp.br>
To: 66253@debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: bug#66253: sort manpage should be more explicit
Date: Thu, 28 Sep 2023 07:11:50 -0300 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <20230928071150.Horde.3giKME-rgKIUNdigQjnchyV@webmail2.ic.unicamp.br> (raw)
The full documentation of sort explains that numeric sorting (as in
"sort -n") accepts a leading "-" sign, decimal points, thousands
separators, etc, but does not accept an explicit "+" sign. Values with
explicit "+" are treated as numeric 0 and ties are broken by alpha sort.
However, the manpage only says that "-n" "compares according to string
numerical value" -- and one would expect the numerical value of "+100"
to be 100, not zero.
It took me an hour to figure out that my "sort -n" was failing because
of this "feature". Surely many users have wasted time too, or worse.
So please either
1) explain precisely IN THE MANPAGE what is a valid number;
2) make numeric sort accept a leading "+", as users would expect;
3) make numeric sort abort with an error message if any field that is
supposed to be sorted numerically is not a valid number.
I think the best solution for users would be to implement all three of
these...
Thank you, and all the best
--jorge
--
Jorge Stolfi - Professor Titular/Full Professor
Instituto de Computação/Computer Science Dept
Universidade Estadual de Campinas/State University of Campinas
Campinas, SP - Brazil
next reply other threads:[~2023-09-28 10:17 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 3+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2023-09-28 10:11 Jorge Stolfi [this message]
2023-09-28 11:22 ` bug#66253: sort manpage should be more explicit Pádraig Brady
2023-09-29 1:11 ` Paul Eggert
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