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Annotation of lucent/sys/man/1/sort, revision 1.1

1.1     ! root        1: .TH SORT 1 
        !             2: .SH NAME
        !             3: sort \- sort and/or merge files
        !             4: .SH SYNOPSIS
        !             5: .B sort
        !             6: [
        !             7: .BI -cmuMbdf\&inrwt x
        !             8: ]
        !             9: [
        !            10: .BI + pos1
        !            11: [
        !            12: .BI - pos2
        !            13: ] ...
        !            14: ] ...
        !            15: [
        !            16: .B -k
        !            17: .I pos1
        !            18: [
        !            19: .I ,pos2
        !            20: ]
        !            21: ] ...
        !            22: [
        !            23: .B -o
        !            24: .I output
        !            25: ]
        !            26: [
        !            27: .B -T
        !            28: .I dir
        !            29: \&...
        !            30: ]
        !            31: [
        !            32: .I option
        !            33: \&...
        !            34: ]
        !            35: [
        !            36: .I file
        !            37: \&...
        !            38: ]
        !            39: .SH DESCRIPTION
        !            40: .I Sort\^
        !            41: sorts
        !            42: lines of all the
        !            43: .I files
        !            44: together and writes the result on
        !            45: the standard output.
        !            46: If no input files are named, the standard input is sorted.
        !            47: .PP
        !            48: The default sort key is an entire line.
        !            49: Default ordering is
        !            50: lexicographic by runes.
        !            51: The ordering is affected globally by the following options,
        !            52: one or more of which may appear.
        !            53: .TP
        !            54: .B -M
        !            55: Compare as months.
        !            56: The first three
        !            57: non-white space characters
        !            58: of the field
        !            59: are folded
        !            60: to upper case
        !            61: and compared
        !            62: so that
        !            63: .L JAN
        !            64: precedes
        !            65: .LR FEB ,
        !            66: etc.
        !            67: Invalid fields
        !            68: compare low to
        !            69: .LR JAN .
        !            70: .TP
        !            71: .B -b
        !            72: Ignore leading white space (spaces and tabs) in field comparisons.
        !            73: .TP
        !            74: .B -d
        !            75: `Phone directory' order:
        !            76: only letters,
        !            77: accented letters,
        !            78: digits and white space
        !            79: are significant in comparisons.
        !            80: .TP
        !            81: .B -f
        !            82: Fold lower case
        !            83: letters onto upper case.
        !            84: Accented characters are folded to their
        !            85: non-accented upper case form.
        !            86: .TP
        !            87: .B -i
        !            88: Ignore characters outside the
        !            89: .SM ASCII
        !            90: range 040-0176
        !            91: in non-numeric comparisons.
        !            92: .TP
        !            93: .B -w
        !            94: Like
        !            95: .BR -i ,
        !            96: but ignore only tabs and spaces.
        !            97: .TP
        !            98: .B -n
        !            99: An initial numeric string,
        !           100: consisting of optional white space,
        !           101: optional plus or minus sign,
        !           102: and zero or more digits with optional decimal point,
        !           103: is sorted by arithmetic value.
        !           104: .TP
        !           105: .B -g
        !           106: Numbers, like
        !           107: .B -n 
        !           108: but with optional 
        !           109: .BR e -style
        !           110: exponents, are sorted by value.
        !           111: .TP
        !           112: .B -r
        !           113: Reverse the sense of comparisons.
        !           114: .TP
        !           115: .BI -t x\^
        !           116: `Tab character' separating fields is
        !           117: .IR x .
        !           118: .PP
        !           119: The notation
        !           120: .BI + "pos1\| " - pos2\^
        !           121: restricts a sort key to a field beginning at
        !           122: .I pos1\^
        !           123: and ending just before
        !           124: .IR pos2 .
        !           125: .I Pos1\^
        !           126: and
        !           127: .I pos2\^
        !           128: each have the form
        !           129: .IB m . n\f1,
        !           130: optionally followed by one or more of the flags
        !           131: .BR Mbdfginr ,
        !           132: where
        !           133: .I m\^
        !           134: tells a number of fields to skip from the beginning of the line and
        !           135: .I n\^
        !           136: tells a number of characters to skip further.
        !           137: If any flags are present they override all the global
        !           138: ordering options for this key.
        !           139: A missing
        !           140: .BI \&. n\^
        !           141: means
        !           142: .BR \&.0 ;
        !           143: a missing
        !           144: .BI - pos2\^
        !           145: means the end of the line.
        !           146: Under the
        !           147: .BI -t x\^
        !           148: option, fields are strings separated by
        !           149: .IR x ;
        !           150: otherwise fields are
        !           151: non-empty strings separated by white space.
        !           152: White space before a field
        !           153: is part of the field, except under option
        !           154: .BR -b .
        !           155: A
        !           156: .B b
        !           157: flag may be attached independently to
        !           158: .IR pos1
        !           159: and
        !           160: .IR pos2.
        !           161: .PP
        !           162: The notation
        !           163: .B -k
        !           164: .IR pos1 [, pos2 ]
        !           165: is how POSIX
        !           166: .I sort
        !           167: defines fields:
        !           168: .I pos1
        !           169: and
        !           170: .I pos2
        !           171: have the same format but different meanings.
        !           172: The value of
        !           173: .I  m\^
        !           174: is origin 1 instead of origin 0
        !           175: and a missing
        !           176: .BI \&. n\^
        !           177: in
        !           178: .I pos2
        !           179: is the end of the field.
        !           180: .PP
        !           181: When there are multiple sort keys, later keys
        !           182: are compared only after all earlier keys
        !           183: compare equal.
        !           184: Lines that otherwise compare equal are ordered
        !           185: with all bytes significant.
        !           186: .PP
        !           187: These option arguments are also understood:
        !           188: .TP \w'\fL-z\fIrecsize\fLXX'u
        !           189: .B -c
        !           190: Check that the single input file is sorted according to the ordering rules;
        !           191: give no output unless the file is out of sort.
        !           192: .TP
        !           193: .B -m
        !           194: Merge; assume the input files are already sorted.
        !           195: .TP
        !           196: .B -u
        !           197: Suppress all but one in each
        !           198: set of equal lines.
        !           199: Ignored bytes
        !           200: and bytes outside keys
        !           201: do not participate in
        !           202: this comparison.
        !           203: .TP
        !           204: .B -o
        !           205: The next argument is the name of an output file
        !           206: to use instead of the standard output.
        !           207: This file may be the same as one of the inputs.
        !           208: .TP
        !           209: .BI -T dir
        !           210: Put temporary files in
        !           211: .I dir
        !           212: rather than in
        !           213: .BR /tmp .
        !           214: .ne 4
        !           215: .SH EXAMPLES
        !           216: .TP
        !           217: .L sort -u +0f +0 list
        !           218: Print in alphabetical order all the unique spellings
        !           219: in a list of words
        !           220: where capitalized words differ from uncapitalized.
        !           221: .TP
        !           222: .L sort -t: +1 /adm/users
        !           223: Print the users file
        !           224: sorted by user name
        !           225: (the second colon-separated field).
        !           226: .TP
        !           227: .L sort -umM dates
        !           228: Print the first instance of each month in an already sorted file.
        !           229: Options
        !           230: .B -um
        !           231: with just one input file make the choice of a
        !           232: unique representative from a set of equal lines predictable.
        !           233: .TP
        !           234: .L
        !           235: grep -n '^' input | sort -t: +1f +0n | sed 's/[0-9]*://'
        !           236: A stable sort: input lines that compare equal will 
        !           237: come out in their original order.
        !           238: .SH FILES
        !           239: .BI /tmp/sort. <pid>.<ordinal>
        !           240: .SH SOURCE
        !           241: .B /sys/src/cmd/sort.c
        !           242: .SH SEE ALSO
        !           243: .IR uniq (1),
        !           244: .IR look (1)
        !           245: .SH DIAGNOSTICS
        !           246: .I Sort
        !           247: comments and exits with non-null status for various trouble
        !           248: conditions and for disorder discovered under option
        !           249: .BR -c .
        !           250: .SH BUGS
        !           251: An external null character can be confused
        !           252: with an internally generated end-of-field character.
        !           253: The result can make a sub-field not sort
        !           254: less than a longer field.
        !           255: .PP
        !           256: Some of the options, e.g.
        !           257: .B -i
        !           258: and
        !           259: .BR -M ,
        !           260: are hopelessly provincial.

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