Gnu/coreutils/Additional-hard 002dcoded-priorities-in-GNU-coreutils 0027-version-sort
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30.3.2 Additional hard-coded priorities in GNU coreutils’ version sort
In GNU coreutils’ version sort algorithm, the following items have special priority and sort earlier than all other characters (listed in order);
- The empty string
- The string ‘
.’ (a single dot character, ASCII 46) - The string ‘
..’ (two dot characters) - Strings start with a dot (‘
.’) sort earlier than strings starting with any other characters.
Example:
$ printf "%s\n" a "" b "." c ".." ".d20" ".d3" | sort -V . .. .d3 .d20 a b c
These priorities make perfect sense for ‘ls -v’: The special
files dot ‘.’ and dot-dot ‘..’ will be listed
first, followed by any hidden files (files starting with a dot),
followed by non-hidden files.
For ‘sort -V’ these priorities might seem arbitrary. However,
because the sorting code is shared between the ls and sort
program, the ordering rules are the same.
