Bash : sort command do not treat dots

Question

I have an array :

a=("toto.blabla" "toto.dlabla" "totodlabla")

then I do :

IFS=$'\n'; echo "${a[*]}" | sort -d; unset IFS

but the result is :

toto.blabla
totodlabla
toto.dlabla

instead of :

toto.blabla
toto.dlabla
totodlabla

Why sort command do not treat dots ?

Best regards,

Olivier

What do you mean by "do not treat dots"? `.` has a lower character code than letters, so it sorts ahead of them. — Barmar, Jul 09 '21 at 15:46
And `-d` is the option to "consider only blanks and alphanumeric characters" — Benjamin W., Jul 09 '21 at 15:47
BTW, you should not `unset IFS`, you should set it back to the normal default. — Barmar, Jul 09 '21 at 15:47
Ok thank you for the explaination, is there a way to sort like i want it to do ? — Olivier, Jul 09 '21 at 15:49

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered Jul 09 '21 at 15:47

3

When sorting, your current locale is influencing the order. If you want locale independent order, use the C locale:

IFS=$'\n'; echo "${a[*]}" | LC_ALL=C sort -d; unset IFS

Setting LC_COLLATE should be enough, in fact.

answered Jul 09 '21 at 15:47

choroba

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Jul 09 '21 at 15:53

0

Thank you, it works :-)

With LC_ALL=C but not with LC_COLLATE=C

answered Jul 09 '21 at 15:53

Olivier

2 Answers2