sort difficulties

[Dan Bernstein]

In article <1105 at maestro.queensu.CA> levisonm at qucis.queensu.CA (Mark Levison) writes:
> maestrosh[277]sort -m -z 5000 breakup
> sort: invalid use of command line options

Some sorts insist that you leave out the space: -z5000. (Pretty silly
interface, if you ask me. I don't see why sort should care what the
maximum line length is beforehand.)

> sort -n -mu file1 file2 >! outputfile

Wasn't there some talk about this in comp.bugs.sys5 recently? Basically,
yes, that's what some sorts do with -n, and you should either get used
to it or use some field specifiers to avoid it.

---Dan