Subject: help with sort(1)
To: None <current-users@netbsd.org>
From: MLH <mlh@goathill.org>
List: current-users
Date: 10/11/2004 10:44:50
Re: bin/25551

We are attempting to convert an old suite of Fortran code used for
population genetics research to a bsd-style license in order to
provide a publically available source package. It is the premier
package for managing genetic, pedigree and demographic data all
together and we get many requests to make it available on other
platforms.

See http://www.sfbr.org/pages/genetics_projects.php?p=42 for a
simplistic description of this package.

We currently use a commercial sort library that we are ready to
replace with a correctly working posix-style field sort if we could
locate one that we could incorporate with permission, etc. None of
the commonly available ones we have tried work correctly, but the
NetBSD sort appears to come the closest. It fails when doing
descending numeric sorts which include blank data beyond the first
field specified. We are approaching a crunch on this and I haven't
been able to improve the situation, so I have been authorized to
offer a bounty (contract) in order to try to obtain some assistance
in fixing this situation.  I would much prefer someone closely
associated with the NetBSD project to work on this.

Please contact me to discuss options.