sort and "<>" characters

[Gabrielli Jean-Paul]

Hi,

I have a portability problem : "<" should be sorted before ">"

On this host:
SunOS aldente 5.7 Generic_106541-42 sun4u sparc SUNW,Ultra-4
I have the following sequence: <>1-9a-z

On this host
Linux syclin20 2.4.21-20.ELdiamant #2 SMP Thu Jun 30 09:46:43 CEST 2005 i686
i686 i386 GNU/Linux
I have the following sequence <>1-9a-z but with "<>" in the middle, the
second field being sorted.

Why don't I have all "<" listed before ">" in the "sort" output on all hosts
?

address@hidden [] test $ cat fichier
a
f
b
c
d
e
1
2
3
4
> a /main/10
< a /main/7
>
> a
< a
<
>
<
address@hidden [] test $ cat fichier | sort
<
<
>
>
1
2
3
4
a
< a
> a
> a /main/10
< a /main/7
b
c
d
e
f

compared to the output on the sun machine:
(aldente)[** NONE **]/yatoo/ssa/ssacms/test> cat fichier | sort
1
2
3
4
<
<
< a
< a /main/7
>
>
> a
> a /main/10
a
b
c
d
e
f
(aldente)[** NONE **]/yatoo/ssa/ssacms/test> 

Thanks,
J-Paul Gabrielli
Thales Underwater Systems