Info Catalog coreutils: Punctuation Characters coreutils: Implementation Details coreutils: Tilde ~ character

coreutils: Punctuation Characters vs letters

 
 30.2.4 Punctuation Characters vs letters
 ----------------------------------------
 
 Rule 2.2.1 dictates that letters sorts earlier than all non-letters
 (after breaking down a string to digits and non-digits parts).
 
      $ cat input6
      a%
      az
 
      $ sort -V input6
      az
      a%
 
    The input strings consist entirely of non-digits, and based on the
 above algorithm have only one part, all non-digit characters (‘‘a%’’ vs
 ‘‘az’’).
 
    Each part is then compared lexically, character-by-character.  ‘‘a’’
 compares identically in both strings.
 
    Rule 2.2.1 dictates that letters (‘‘z’’) sorts earlier than all
 non-letters (‘‘%’’) - hence ‘‘az’’ appears first (despite ‘‘z’’ having
 ASCII value of 122, much bigger than ‘‘%’’ with ASCII value 37).
 

Info Catalog coreutils: Punctuation Characters coreutils: Implementation Details coreutils: Tilde ~ character