Behaviour of GNU sort command (with non-letter ASCII characters, such as dot or semicolon)

Question

I want the sort command to treat all characters equal.

For example, when I do

$ echo -e 'TEST.b\nTESTa\nTESTc' | sort
TESTa
TEST.b
TESTc

the dot is ignored.

I would like to get TEST.b at the last or first position. However, I cannot find the proper parameter in the manual page.

(my version of sort is from the GNU core utilities).

Also found this link: superuser.com/questions/226449/… echo -e 'TEST.b\nTESTa\nTESTc' | sort -V also works without setting to locale. — thaller
– thaller, Commented May 12, 2011 at 18:50

Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams · Accepted Answer · 2011-05-12 18:45:42Z

23

Force collation to C in order to compare the raw character values.

$ echo -e 'TEST.b\nTESTa\nTESTc' | LC_COLLATE=C sort
TEST.b
TESTa
TESTc

answered May 12, 2011 at 18:45

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1 Comment

I tried LC_ALL=C but it seems to fail in some cases? LC_COLLATE=C worked best!

Isidro Arias · Accepted Answer · 2023-12-25 16:43:42Z

0

$ echo -e 'TEST.b\nTESTa\nTESTc' | env -i sort

answered Dec 25, 2023 at 16:43

Isidro Arias

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