sort question

[Michael Morrell]

/ hpsal2:comp.unix.questions / gph at hpsemc.HP.COM (Paul Houtz) / 10:04 am  May 16, 1989 /
   The problem with having to set the field delimiter is that you have to
decide what to set it TO.  Now, if you are reading from a file that has 
binary data in it, then it is possible that a newline character could appear
in the binary data.  This seems to me like it might be a problem.   Sort
would think it found the end of line.
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  Maybe I'm confused, but how do you do a column sort on binary data?  Aren't
columns numbers defined within each line, implying some "newline" char?

  Michael