sorting - bash sort unusual order. Problem with spaces? -

lots of time gone in bug, tracks sort...

can explain why unsorted result, when bash docs tell me delimiter transition white non-white characters? shouldn't first field sorted?

>sort myfile.txt 10_10000000 19 10_10000001 20 10_10000002 19 10_10000003 17 10_10000004 16 10_1000000 44 10_10000005 16 10_10000006 16 10_10000007 17 10_10000008 16 

of course using +0 -1 gives me expected result:

>sort +0 -1 myfile.txt 10_1000000 44 10_10000000 19 10_10000001 20 10_10000002 19 10_10000003 17 10_10000004 16 10_10000005 16 10_10000006 16 10_10000007 17 10_10000008 16 

some metainfo:

>type sort sort hashed (/bin/sort) 

i using

sort (gnu coreutils) 5.97   >locale lang=en_us.utf-8 lc_ctype="en_us.utf-8" lc_numeric="en_us.utf-8" lc_time="en_us.utf-8" lc_collate="en_us.utf-8" lc_monetary="en_us.utf-8" lc_messages="en_us.utf-8" lc_paper="en_us.utf-8" lc_name="en_us.utf-8" lc_address="en_us.utf-8" lc_telephone="en_us.utf-8" lc_measurement="en_us.utf-8" lc_identification="en_us.utf-8" lc_all= 

i think seeing locale-based issues. (many?) locales affect way sort works, in chars ignored. in case, looks space between fields being ignored when don't specify fields sort. remove space , can see row looks it's in wrong place correct.

if run sort different locale you'll different result:

$ lang=c sort myfile.txt 

my default locale en_au.utf-8 , see original sort results. when set lang=c, see results expecting.