Tilde ~ character (GNU Coreutils 9.0)
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30.2.5 Tilde ‘~’ character
Rule 2.2.2 dictates that tilde character ‘~’ (ASCII 126) sorts before all other non-digit characters, including an empty part.
$ cat input7 1 1% 1.2 1~ ~ $ sort -V input7 ~ 1~ 1 1% 1.2
The sorting algorithm starts by breaking down the string into non-digits (rule 2) and digits parts (rule 3).
In the above input file, only the last line in the input file starts with a non-digit (‘~’). This is the first part. All other lines in the input file start with a digit - their first non-digit part is empty.
Based on rule 2.2.2, tilde ‘~’ sorts before all other non-digits including the empty part - hence it comes before all other strings, and is listed first in the sorted output.
The remaining lines (1, 1%, 1.2, 1~) follow similar logic: The digit part is extracted (1 for all strings) and compares identical. The following extracted parts for the remaining input lines are: empty part, %, ., ~.
Tilde sorts before all others, hence the line 1~ appears next.
The remaining lines (1, 1%, 1.2) are sorted based on previously explained rules.
