Re: join fails on numerically sorted key fields?

[Paul Eggert]

address@hidden writes:

> It would be quite helpful for me if if I could use join with
> numerically sorted key fields, without having to alpha sort the
> files on the key fields, perform join, then numerically resort the
> files on the key fields

Yes, that would be a nice feature to add.  Perhaps you could write
the code and documentation?  The behavior should be consistent
with that of sort -n and/or sort -g, and should use similarly-named
options.

Of course join can't sort numerically by default, because that would
break existing scripts and POSIX doesn't allow it.  See
<http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/utilities/join.html>.
But it sort numerically if you pass it an option.