sort bug seeks wizard

[Carl Shapiro]

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Running 4.2 on a 750, I have encountered a bug in sort, such that the output
of "sort -u", when run against a particular file, is missing one line.

Unfortunately, the file that produces this error is 136550 bytes (45516
lines), and I have been unable to extract a reasonably small subset of
the file which will demonstrate the bug.  Nevertheless, I consider this
extremely serious.  I'll never know what erroneous reports my application
has turned out;  I use sort a lot, and it was only by accident that I
noticed the problem with a file this large.  I would be glad to send any
interested party a copy of the file, but I think that it is too big to
send over the net.

Everything seems to go ok until the final call to the "merge" routine,
and although I have come up with a patch that fixes this instance of
the problem, the fact that I can't replicate the bug with a smaller file
verifies that my understanding of sort is inadequate.

Does any of this sound familiar?
Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

    Carl Shapiro
    ...sdcrdcf!otto!carl