Bug 141371

Summary:	Shell command sort options unusable or strange defaults
Product:	[openSUSE] SUSE LINUX 10.0	Reporter:	Dirk Stoecker <opensuse>
Component:	Basesystem	Assignee:	Andreas Schwab <schwab>
Status:	RESOLVED INVALID	QA Contact:	E-mail List <qa-bugs>
Severity:	Normal
Priority:	P5 - None	CC:	suse-beta
Version:	Final
Target Milestone:	---
Hardware:	Other
OS:	Other
Whiteboard:
Found By:	Other	Services Priority:
Business Priority:		Blocker:	---
Marketing QA Status:	---	IT Deployment:	---

Description Dirk Stoecker 2006-01-04 10:02:52 UTC

The shell sort command has at least these 2 options always turned on in case you use German language:

  -d, --dictionary-order
  -f, --ignore-case

As there is no way to reverse the effect of any default options (except there is a hidden not-documented way I do not know) it is impossible to do normal sorts.

Only with the workaround of LC_ALL=C it is possible to do normal sort (and only from shell context and with loosing native language).

Either the default options should be same for all the languages (which I would prefer especially when thinking about scripts using sort) or there should be reverse-options to everthing which can get turned on by default.

Comment 1 Dr. Werner Fink 2006-01-09 11:39:57 UTC

The default sorting order is provided by your language setup.
If you do not like german sorting order and prefer plain POSIX
rules you may use

         LC_COLLATE=POSIX
         export LC_COLLATE

Nevertheless I will not break global localization for all
users.

Comment 2 Dirk Stoecker 2006-01-09 12:28:59 UTC

That is not the point. I don't complain about the defaults.

The problem is, that a user cannot change the settings, when in non-english mode (whereas an english user can). There are no negative forms for the related options (when they are turned on).

As sort is probably a GNU tool, a added "!" in the getopt arguments will add the negative form and thus fix this (additionally requiring manual page updates as well thought).

Setting LC_COLLATE or any other environment variable is no acceptable workaround. There are to many side effects and restrictions to this.

Comment 3 Andreas Schwab 2006-01-11 13:25:49 UTC

This is how LC_COLLATE is supposed to work.

Comment 4 Dirk Stoecker 2006-01-11 14:22:46 UTC

To RESTRICT a user to locales defaults? I cannot believe this. Sorry.

Maybe I live in a different world, but I see a big difference between default settings and the IMPOSSIBILITY to change settings.

Thought, as it seems instead of fixing the bug it will be handled as invalid again, I will no reopen it. Seems SuSE goes the Microsoft way: "It's not a bug, it's a feature".