Lessons the hard way, Part IV

While wrapping up the finishing stages of the Oracle Applications Upgrade from you know where, I discovered the sort command works different on Solaris and Linux.

Take for example, a simple little directory listing:

jake$ cat sortit.txt
prodappl
prodappl/abm
prodappl/APPLSYS.env.tmp
prodappl/abm/11.5.0/admin
prodappl/APPSORA.env
prodappl/PROD.env
prodappl/abm/11.5.0
prodappl/abm/11.5.0/admin/driver
prodappl/APPLSYS.env
prodappl/abm/11.5.0/admin/driver/abmcon.drv

On Linux, I sort it:

jake$ cat sortit.txt | sort
prodappl
prodappl/abm
prodappl/abm/11.5.0
prodappl/abm/11.5.0/admin
prodappl/abm/11.5.0/admin/driver
prodappl/abm/11.5.0/admin/driver/abmcon.drv
prodappl/APPLSYS.env
prodappl/APPLSYS.env.tmp
prodappl/APPSORA.env
prodappl/PROD.env

On Solaris, same command:

woody# cat sortit.txt | sort
prodappl
prodappl/APPLSYS.env
prodappl/APPLSYS.env.tmp
prodappl/APPSORA.env
prodappl/PROD.env
prodappl/abm
prodappl/abm/11.5.0
prodappl/abm/11.5.0/admin
prodappl/abm/11.5.0/admin/driver
prodappl/abm/11.5.0/admin/driver/abmcon.drv

Hmm. I did a "man sort" and found my answer was to force a sort order using the -f flag.