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Date:      Sun, 22 Sep 2002 17:59:53 +1000
From:      Tim Robbins <tjr@FreeBSD.ORG>
To:        walt <wa1ter@hotmail.com>
Cc:        freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: libc error question answered (partly)
Message-ID:  <20020922175953.A72230@dilbert.robbins.dropbear.id.au>
In-Reply-To: <3D8D372B.9040806@hotmail.com>; from wa1ter@hotmail.com on Sat, Sep 21, 2002 at 08:21:15PM -0700
References:  <amjc6i$2mr5$1@FreeBSD.csie.NCTU.edu.tw> <3D8D372B.9040806@hotmail.com>

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On Sat, Sep 21, 2002 at 08:21:15PM -0700, walt wrote:

> walt wrote:
> 
> > My guess is that the syntax of 'sort' has changed since lorder
> > was modified in March of 2001(?)
> 
> David Wolfskill just pointed out to me that the behavior of 'sort'
> is completely different in -STABLE, which I've just confirmed.
> 
> Does anyone else see this behavior in -CURRENT?  What happens
> if you type 'sort +1' on your -CURRENT machine?

The +POS1 -POS2 syntax for specifying sort keys was (from memory) marked
as obsolescent in IEEE Std. 1003.2-1992 and removed (and disallowed) in
1003.1-2001. Many applications (like lorder) use the old syntax, so by default
GNU sort does not conform to the 2001 standard and accepts the old syntax.
If you set _POSIX2_VERSION=200112 in the environment before running GNU sort,
it will try to conform to the newer standard and treat "+pos" as a filename
instead of a sort key. The version of sort in -stable was written before
the 2001 standard and doesn't disable the obsolescent sort key syntax.

So the only explanation that I can think of is that you've got _POSIX2_VERSION
set in the environment:
$ _POSIX2_VERSION=200112 sort +1
sort: open failed: +1: No such file or directory

lorder should probably get changed to use the new syntax some time too.


Tim

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