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Diffstat (limited to 'doc/coreutils.texi')
| -rw-r--r-- | doc/coreutils.texi | 25 |
1 files changed, 12 insertions, 13 deletions
diff --git a/doc/coreutils.texi b/doc/coreutils.texi index 4a4143039..66309b183 100644 --- a/doc/coreutils.texi +++ b/doc/coreutils.texi @@ -3802,19 +3802,18 @@ converting to floating point. @opindex --sort @cindex human numeric sort @vindex LC_NUMERIC -Sort numerically, and in addition handle IEC or SI suffixes like MiB, -MB etc (@ref{Block size}). Each number consists of optional blanks, -an optional @samp{-} sign, zero or more digits, optionally followed by -a decimal-point character and zero or more digits, and optionally -followed by an IEC or SI suffix. A number with no digits is treated -as @samp{0}. The @env{LC_NUMERIC} locale specifies the decimal-point -character. - -Numbers containing differing suffixes are compared using -floating-point arithmetic, and therefore may not be compared exactly -due to rounding error. However, the output of @command{df}, -@command{du}, and @command{ls} contains so few digits before suffixes -that rounding error is not significant and comparisons are exact. +Sort numerically, first by numeric sign (negative, zero, or positive); +then by @acronym{SI} suffix (either empty, or @samp{k} or @samp{K}, or +one of @samp{MGTPEZY}, in that order; @xref{Block size}); and finally +by numeric value. For example, @samp{1023M} sorts before @samp{1G} +because @samp{M} (mega) precedes @samp{G} (giga) as an @acronym{SI} +suffix. This option sorts values that are consistently scaled to the +nearest suffix, regardless of whether suffixes denote powers of 1000 +or 1024, and it therefore sorts the output of any single invocation of +the @command{df}, @command{du}, or @command{ls} commands that are +invoked with their @option{--human-readable} or @option{--si} options. +The syntax for numbers is the same as for the @option{--numeric-sort} +option; the @acronym{SI} suffix must immediately follow the number. @item -i @itemx --ignore-nonprinting |