Re: comm: use numeric sort (optionally)

[Pádraig Brady]

unarchive 6366
stop

On 08/22/2012 09:17 PM, Sam Steingold wrote:
> Hi,
> I have a file of numbers (integers IDs) which are sorted numerically,
> but comm complains that they are not.
> I suggest that comm accept "-n" option (like sort) to use numeric sort.
> Thanks.

Yes.
comm, join, uniq really should support the same field selection
and comparision flags as sort.

There are already bugs for that:
http://bugs.gnu.org/5832
http://bugs.gnu.org/6366

For reference, the following examples show
expected an unexpected behavior respectively:

$ comm --nocheck <(printf "%s\n" a b c j k) <(printf "%s\n" a b d e j)
                a
                b
c
        d
        e
                j
k

$ comm --nocheck <(printf "%s\n" 1 2 3 10 11) <(printf "%s\n" 1 2 5 6 10)
                1
                2
3
10
11
        5
        6
        10

cheers,
Pádraig.