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SORT.DOC
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1989-01-22
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sort(1)
NAME
sort - sort and/or merge files
SYNTAX
sort [ -bdfimnrutx ] [ +pos1 [ -pos2 ] ] [ -o name ] [ -T dir ] [ name...]
DESCRIPTION
Sort sorts, then writes the lines of the named files to its standard
output, or a file (-o option).
Default (no input files are named), the standard input is sorted.
The name "-" stands for the standard input, so that standard input can be
used together with other input files.
By default, the sort key is an entire line; ordering is lexicographic.
The global ordering is affected by zero or more of the following options
(of which some combinations are meaningless, e.g. d and n).
-b Leading blanks (spaces and tabs) are skipped in field comparisons.
-d Dictionary order: only letters, digits and blanks are
significant in comparisons.
-f Fold: treat upper case as if lower case.
-i Ignore characters outside the ASCII range 040-0176 in
nonnumeric comparisons.
-n An initial numeric string, consisting of optional
blanks, optional minus sign, and zero or more digits
with optional decimal point, is sorted by arithmetic
value. This option implies option b.
-r Reverse the result of comparisons.
-tx `Tab character' field separator is x.
The notation +pos1 -pos2 restricts a sort key to a field
beginning at pos1 and ending just before pos2.
Pos1 and pos2 each have the form m.n, optionally followed by one
or more of the options bdfinr, where m tells a number of fields
to skip from the beginning of the line and n tells a number
of characters to skip further. If any options are present
they override all the global ordering options for this key.
If the b option is in effect n is counted from the first
nonblank in the field.
A missing .n means .0; a missing -pos2 means the end of the
line. Under the -tx option, fields are strings separated by
x; otherwise fields are nonempty nonblank strings separated
by blanks.
When there are multiple sort keys, later keys are compared
only after all earlier keys compare equal.
These are additional (global) options:
-c Check that the input file is sorted according to the key(s);
if the file is out of sort, an error message is printed.
Exit code is 0/1 for correctly/incorrectly sorted input.
-m Merge only, the input files are already sorted.
-o The next argument is the output file used instead of the
standard output. This file may be the same as one of the inputs.
-T Temporary files directory. Default is \tmp on the current drive.
-u Unique: Select only one in each set of, according to the
key(s), equal lines.
RESTRICTIONS
Very long (>256 chars) lines are silently truncated.
The line terminator sequence \r\n is present in the line when
doing comparisions; this should not present problems. Use of \0 in
input is discouraged, since this will be seen as a C string terminator.
DIAGNOSTICS
Comments and exits with nonzero status for various trouble
conditions and for disorder discovered under option c(heck).
FILES
\tmp\* for temporary files.