41 lines
1.2 KiB
Plaintext
41 lines
1.2 KiB
Plaintext
On the criteria for ordering
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==============================
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The following sh code creates several files in a directory and then
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calls "*", listing them in order.
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printf '@ b\n- d\n? a\n~ c\n! e\n' | while read line; do
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touch -- "${line}"
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done
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for file in *; do echo "$file"; done
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On one computer, running FreeBSD, the order is apparently ASCIIbetical.
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! e
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- d
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? a
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@ b
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~ c
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On two GNU systems, running NixOS and Debian, respectively, output is
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in dictionary order. I'm not exactly sure what dictionary order is, but
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it is something like sorting on the alphabetical characters before
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sorting on the rest of the line.
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? a
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@ b
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~ c
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- d
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! e
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While I don't really know what dictionary order is, I was able to determine
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that the above results are in dictionary order because of my investigation of
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incompatible implementations of sort. Consider the following two sort
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commands.
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printf '@ b\n- d\n? a\n~ c\n! e\n' | sort
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printf '@ b\n- d\n? a\n~ c\n! e\n' | sort -d
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With BSD sort, the first of these commands print ASCIIbetical order and
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the second prints dictionary order. With GNU sort, both print dictionary
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order.
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