>From a3311c966e34f2d9f8aa6b1de31b211124803d02 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: =?UTF-8?q?P=C3=A1draig=20Brady?= Date: Wed, 1 Jun 2016 11:56:47 +0100 Subject: [PATCH] doc: clarify sort --key handling of default field separators * doc/coreutils.texi (sort invocation): Mention in the summary dicussion that --key is used to specify fields. Give a summary in the --key description, of the most common use case of specifying a field, and that by default those fields include the blank separators at the start of each field in the comparisons. --- doc/coreutils.texi | 11 +++++++++-- 1 file changed, 9 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-) diff --git a/doc/coreutils.texi b/doc/coreutils.texi index 6a671bb..47c63db 100644 --- a/doc/coreutils.texi +++ b/doc/coreutils.texi @@ -4022,7 +4022,7 @@ sort address@hidden@dots{} address@hidden@dots{} Many options affect how @command{sort} compares lines; if the results are unexpected, try the @option{--debug} option to see what happened. A pair of lines is compared as follows: address@hidden compares each pair of fields, in the address@hidden compares each pair of fields (see @option{--key}), in the order specified on the command line, according to the associated ordering options, until a difference is found or no fields are left. If no key fields are specified, @command{sort} uses a default key of @@ -4332,7 +4332,14 @@ Specify a sort field that consists of the part of the line between @var{pos1} and @var{pos2} (or the end of the line, if @var{pos2} is omitted), @emph{inclusive}. -Each @var{pos} has the form @address@hidden@address@hidden, +In its simplest form @var{pos} specifies a field number (starting with 1), +with fields being separated by runs of blank characters, and by default +those blanks being included in the comparison at the start of each field. +To adjust the handling of blank characters see the @option{-b} and address@hidden options. + +More generally, +each @var{pos} has the form @address@hidden@address@hidden, where @var{f} is the number of the field to use, and @var{c} is the number of the first character from the beginning of the field. Fields and character positions are numbered starting with 1; a character position of zero in -- 2.5.5