bug in the unix join command or maybe in the sort command

[Robert Castelo]

hi,

i'd like to report what i think it's a bug of the unix command 'join'.
i'm using FEDORA core 2.0


create a file p.txt containing the letter 'a' followed by a newline:

$ cat p.txt
a

and a file q.txt containing two columns separated by a tab as follows:

$ cat q.txt
aa      value-aa
a       value-a

where each line ends with a newline character.

if i perform a sort command on the file q to order it by the first
column i obtain the same ordered contents indicating that the lines are
already ordered properly:

$ sort -k 1,1 q.txt
aa      value-aa
a       value-a

however, if i perform a join command on p.txt and q.txt it doesn't join
the line with the common value 'a' on the first column of both files!!

$ join p.txt q.txt


if i swap manually the lines in q.txt:

$ cat q.txt
a       value-a
aa      value-aa

and perform the join, then it works!!

$ join p.txt q.txt
a value-a


am i doing something wrong or is this a bug in sort and/or in join.


thanks!
robert.