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From: guy@sun.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.bugs,net.bugs.4bsd,net.bugs.usg
Subject: Re: Sort feature ?
Message-ID: <5922@sun.uucp>
Date: Thu, 7-Aug-86 03:49:58 EDT
Article-I.D.: sun.5922
Posted: Thu Aug  7 03:49:58 1986
Date-Received: Sun, 10-Aug-86 05:16:08 EDT
References: <247@petrus.UUCP>
Distribution: net
Organization: Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Lines: 25
Xref: watmath net.bugs:865 net.bugs.4bsd:2271 net.bugs.usg:525

> The reason is that sort considers the delimiter as a field terminator
> and not as a field separator.  Does anyone have a fix for this
> feature (bug)?

This behavior persists in the S5R2 "sort", which seems to be derived from
Linderman's (answering your second question).  The real question is "Does
anybody know whether:

	this is considered a feature, and thus should not be fixed;

	this is just a bug that nobody in a position to do anything
	about it has encountered or had pointed out to them;

or

	this is just incredibly hard to fix without breaking something
	else?"

It certainly violates the Principle of Least Surprise, and has probably
caught enough people unawares; is there anything out there that *depends* on
this gross behavior?
-- 
	Guy Harris
	{ihnp4, decvax, seismo, decwrl, ...}!sun!guy
	guy@sun.com (or guy@sun.arpa)