Re: sort

Gong Cheng <[email protected]> wrote:
> sort -n cannot recognize scientific notation, e.g.
> 3e-4
> 4e-5
>
> it will say 4e-5 is bigger because it cannot recognize scientific notation

To handle input in scientific notation, use --general-numeric-sort (-g).
See the documentation (run `info sort') for a description of how -n works.
Note that the last paragraph of the -n description says this:

     Neither a leading `+' nor exponential notation is recognized.  To
     compare such strings numerically, use the `--general-numeric-sort'
     (`-g') option.

E.g.,

  $ printf '3e-4\n4e-5\n' |sort -g
  4e-5
  3e-4

Also, since you've reported this to the bug-textutils address,
I suspect you will want to use a newer version:

  ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/coreutils/coreutils-5.0.tar.bz2
  (coreutils is the union of fileutils, textutils, and sh-utils)