urchin/SORTING

On the criteria for ordering
==============================
The following sh code creates several files in a directory and then
calls "*", listing them in order.

    printf '@ b\n- d\n? a\n~ c\n! e\n' | while read line; do
      touch -- "${line}"
    done
    for file in *; do echo "$file"; done

On one computer, running FreeBSD, the order is apparently ASCIIbetical.

    ! e
    - d
    ? a
    @ b
    ~ c

On two GNU systems, running NixOS and Debian, respectively, output is
in dictionary order. I'm not exactly sure what dictionary order is, but
it is something like sorting on the alphabetical characters before
sorting on the rest of the line.

    ? a
    @ b
    ~ c
    - d
    ! e

While I don't really know what dictionary order is, I was able to determine
that the above results are in dictionary order because of my investigation of
incompatible implementations of sort. Consider the following two sort
commands.

    printf '@ b\n- d\n? a\n~ c\n! e\n' | sort
    printf '@ b\n- d\n? a\n~ c\n! e\n' | sort -d

With BSD sort, the first of these commands print ASCIIbetical order and
the second prints dictionary order. With GNU sort, both print dictionary
order.