What's the default order of linux sort?

Question

For a long period I think the default behavior of sort program is using ASCII. However, when I input the following lines into sort without any arguments:

#
@

I got:

@
#

But according to the ASCII, # is 35 and @ is 64. Another example is:

A
a

And the output is:

a
A

Anybody can explain this? By the way, what is 'directory-order' when using sord -d?

Answer 1

Looks like you are using a non-POSIX locale.

Try:

export LC_ALL=C

and then sort.

info sort clearly says:

(1) If you use a non-POSIX locale (e.g., by setting LC_ALL' to en_US'), then sort' may produce output that is sorted differently than you're accustomed to. In that case, set theLC_ALL' environment variable to C'.In that case, set theLC_ALL' environment variable to C'. Note that setting onlyLC_COLLATE' has two problems. First, it is ineffective if LC_ALL' is also set. Second, it has undefined behavior ifLC_CTYPE' (or LANG', ifLC_CTYPE' is unset) is set to an incompatible value. For example, you get undefined behavior if LC_CTYPE' isja_JP.PCK' but LC_COLLATE' isen_US.UTF-8'.

Answer 2

To determine the sort order, simply create a file with a different character on each line and the sort it. The resulting output will tell you the sort order.