bug#20745: I would like to make a request for the sort command

[Pádraig Brady]

On 05/06/15 18:13, Silverman, Jeffrey X. -ND wrote:
> People,
> 
> I realize that the sort command must be on the order of 40 years old and is 
> “mature” software, but I would like to make a request for enhancement anyway. 
>  I would like the capability of adding 2 data types that can be sorted: IPv4 
> addresses and IPv6 addresses.  To do that, the addresses should be converted 
> to integers of length 32 bits and 128 bits and then sorted. I’m not sure that 
> 128 bit integers is portable, but converting to a 32 bit string with no 
> missing zeros would suffice.
> 
> 
> If this is something that interests you, then I think I could write a 
> preprocessor in python as a proof of concept.

This was previously discussed, and while has merit
at the time it was thought not important enough to add:

  http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/rejected_requests.html
    http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/coreutils/2011-06/msg00082.html

thanks,
Pádraig.