Re: Possible bug in 'sort -m'

[Bob McGowan <bob_mcgowan@symantec.com>]

Cameron Hutchison wrote:
> Bob McGowan wrote:
>
> > Here, I numerically sort and merge the two source files into a 
> > destination and count lines in all three.  Then I get unique lines from 
> > the merged sort and count the result.
> > $ sort -n -m from_number to_number > xxx
>
> A merge sort (sort -m) needs the input files to be already sorted. The
> man page for -m says "merge already sorted files; do not sort". You have
> not shown that from_number and to_number are already sorted, so there is
> a possible failure right there.
>
> You should also indicate the versions of sort and uniq that you are
> using. There may well be bugs. Have you checked the changelogs for these
> programs since your version to see if there have been related bugs
> fixed?

Curses.  I thought I had the from_number and to_number files sorted 
numerically, but, found that I had not ;((

So much for pulling out hair in frustration, I should have gone home and 
slept on it instead.

Nice catch and my apologies for the long winded posts.

Bob

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