Re: bin/39308: sort +1n failure

[David Laight <david%l8s.co.uk@localhost>]

The following reply was made to PR bin/39308; it has been noted by GNATS.

From: David Laight <david%l8s.co.uk@localhost>
To: gnats-bugs%NetBSD.org@localhost
Cc: 
Subject: Re: bin/39308: sort +1n failure
Date: Sat, 15 Aug 2009 22:40:20 +0100

 This is a bug in the handling of large files, not numeric sort fields.
 
 The code seems to start sorting on subsequent bytes of the key as part
 of the actions when it saves chunks of sorted data to disk.
 Since the key record for the first line is {190,170,0,'x',' ','4'} it
 soon runs off that buffer - and into the later records.
 (It also advances past the key of the other lines, but the later bytes
 are always the same for those.)
 
 I'm not (yet) at all sure what the 'radix exchange' is trying to achieve,
 but I suspect it is at fault here.
 
        David
 
 -- 
 David Laight: david%l8s.co.uk@localhost