Bug in GNU sort?

[jal]

I have found very weird behaviour in sort on Linux, and I'm wondering if it's me doing something wrong, or whether there's a bug in there.

I have this input file:

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20       6      1234XX
12       10     1234XX
14       13     1234AA

I would like to sort on the third column first, then on the second column, but numerical, not ASCII. I figured this should do it:

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sort -k3,3 -k2,2n inp.txt

However, the result comes out wrong:

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14       13     1234AA
12       10     1234XX
20       6      1234XX

Although the third column is sorted the way I want, the second isn't: 6 should come before 10. So I tried something slightly different:

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sort -n -k3,3f -k2,2 inp.txt

But no such luck: though the 'f' triggers ASCII sorting, it also somehow prevents the second -k receiving the global -n. Then I tried to switch the columns in the input file:

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20       1234XX      6 
12       1234XX      10
14       1234AA      13

And what do you know? Both "-k2,2 -k3,3n" and "-n -k2,2f -k3,3" produce the right, expected output:

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14       1234AA      13
20       1234XX      6 
12       1234XX      10

I'm a bit lost here, as this is behaviour that is certainly not documented (not that "man sort" gives that many helpful information), and I would think this is a bug. If it is, where can I report it?


JAL

[KotuxGuy]

man sort says:

Report sort bugs to [email protected]

I hope this isn't necroposting..

[jal]

I hope this isn't necroposting..

Hardly. Thanks for that, now I'm a bit ashamed I didn't see that myself.


JAL

[KotuxGuy]

No problem!