Re: bug in sort with '.' in strings

[Eric Blake]

> 
> Hi,
> 
> Sort seems to ignore (incorrectly handle) the character '.' in the 
> strings.  The following output is what I get with:
> 
> $ sort --version
> sort (coreutils) 4.5.3
> Written by Mike Haertel and Paul Eggert.

This version is quite old.  The current stable version is 5.93, see
the announcement at
http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-coreutils/2005-11/msg00058.html

> 
> I would expect all of the 'qbits.*' to be either before or after
> all of the 'qbits2.*' in the above output.

Thanks for the report.  However, it is most likely that this is not
a bug in sort, but a misunderstanding on your part.  Read up on
this FAQ:

http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/faq/coreutils-faq.html#Sort-does-not-sort-in-normal-order_0021

Then inspect the output of the locale command, and try
rerunning sort with LC_ALL=C in your environment.

--
Eric Blake