[Coreutils] Sort enhancement request: 1 < 1K < 1M < 1G etc.

[Philip Ganchev]

It would be useful if sort could understand numeric abbreviations, for
example 1k = 1,000 and 1K = 1024. This need arises for me very often
when I want a sorted list of human-readable file sizes like the output
of "du -h". Currently, to use "sort" you have to resort to raw
numbers, which are hard to read if they have 7 or more digits.  I'm
sure the feature would useful more generally.

This feature can be implemented as part of the "--general-numeric"
option to "sort".

Alternatively, maybe coreutils should include a general program to
parse numbers in text and re-format them, while outputting the rest of
the text unchanged.