Bug in sort v5.2.1

[Reg. Charney]

I believe that sort in coreutils v5.2.1 has a basic bug in it - it seems to 
treat the period (.) as a non-existant character. Here is an example:

$cat sample
a.z
ab.a
a.c

$sort sample
ab.a
a.c
a.z

This would be correct if we were to ignore the periods - the sort order would 
be aba, ac, az. I believe the order should be a.c, a.z, ab.a

Reg. Charney