I'm running Ubuntu 20.0.4.
Consider these contents of the following file (suppose the file is named input) ...
/zzzzz foo bar
/hij zzz
xyz abc
/abc
ijk lmnop
qwer tyuiop
abc def
If I run /bin/sort input, I get the following output ...
/abc
abc def
/hij zzz
ijk lmnop
qwer tyuiop
xyz abc
/zzzzz foo bar
As you can see, the leading forward slash is totally ignored by the sort algorithm. There is nothing in the sort man page which says anything about forward slashes being treated in any kind of special way.
But if I replace each of the forward slashes with the $ character, this behavior does not occur. For example, suppose that a file which is named newinput contains these values ...
$zzzzz foo bar
$hij zzz
xyz abc
$abc
ijk lmnop
qwer tyuiop
abc def
In other words, newinput is the same as input, except for the fact that / characters have been changed to $ characters. When I do /bin/sort newinput, I get these results ...
$abc
$hij zzz
$zzzzz foo bar
abc def
ijk lmnop
qwer tyuiop
xyz abc
As you can see, in this case, the $ is indeed treated as a normal, sortable character by /bin/sort.
So, what's going on here? And how do I cause /bin/sort to pay attention to the / character?
Thank you in advance for any ideas and suggestions.
UPDATE: If I do this under Debian, the sort works properly, both with regard to / and $.
So, I'm wondering if this behavior might be a "feature" of Ubuntu.
