From: utzoo!decvax!cca!ima!johnl Newsgroups: net.unix-wizards Title: Re: Sort Problem Article-I.D.: ima.208 Posted: Mon Aug 30 12:13:04 1982 Received: Wed Sep 8 03:29:05 1982 References: megatest.134 You can't tell Unix sort to sort only on the first field. The manual says that lines that otherwise compare equal are sorted on the whole line. If you want a stable sort (i.e., equal lines stay in their original order) you have to be explicit and number the lines beforehand, sort with +0n ..., and unnumber them. Gross but true. The sorting algorithm used is not easily persuaded to sort stably and if sort had a "stable" flag it would have to do the numbering itself. Under 3.0, the following command line will do the trick: pr -n -t | sort +0n $* | cut -c7- If you are missing "cut" and "pr -n", you can use sed: sed = | sed 'N s/\n/ /' | sort +0n $* | sed '[0123456789]* ' John Levine, decvax!cca!ima!johnl, harpo!esquire!ima!johnl (uucp) Levine@YALE (Arpa), 617-491-5450 (desperation)