asort - Sorts or merges files and supports multiple collating
weight sequences
asort [-m] [-o output_file] [-Abdfinruv] [-Ccollate_sequence]
[-k keydef]... [-t character] [-T directory]
[-y] [kilobytes] [-z record_size]... file...
asort -c [-u] [-Abdfinruv] [-Ccollate_sequence] [-k keydef]...
[-t character] [-T directory] [-y] [kilobytes] [-z
record_size]... file...
The following syntax is maintained for backward compatibility
but may be withdrawn in a future release: asort
[-Abcdfimnruv] [-Ccollate_sequence] [-o output_file] [-t
character] [-T directory] [-y] [kilobytes] [-z
record_size] [+fskip] [.cskip] [-fskip] [.cskip]
[-bdfinr]... file...
The asort command includes the same options as the sort
command (see sort(1)) in addition to the following
options: Specifies the collating weight sequence to be
used in sorting the data files. When this option is specified,
the asort command does not use the collating table
from the locale database. Instead, the command uses a set
of special system and user collating tables to determine
the collating weights of characters, including userdefined
characters (UDCs).
The collate_sequence argument can be in long form
(for example, "Pinyin Radical Stroke") or short
form (for example, prs). The codeset of the locale
determines which collation weight names can be
specified for collate_sequence. The following list
specifies the long and short collation weight names
that are valid for supported codesets.
For DEC Hanzi:
Pinyon (or p) Radical (or r) Stroke (or s) For DEC
Hanyu, Taiwanese EUC, and BIG-5:
Phonetic (or p) Radical (or r) Stroke (or s) Uses a
breadth-first sorting mechanism instead of the
default depth-first mechanism to sort the input
data. To have any effect, the -v option must be
used together with the -C option.
The asort command sorts lines in its input files and
writes the result to standard output. The asort command
is similar to the sort command. See the sort(1) reference
page for information about features the two commands have
in common.
The asort command provides additional features for processing
multiple collating weight sequences used with
Asian languages, such as Chinese. For example, pinyon
(p), stroke (s), and radical (r) are three dimensions
along which characters can be ordered in Simplified Chinese.
The -C option allows users to specify the priority
level that these dimensions have during sorting. For example,
-C srp specifies that characters should be sorted
first by stroke, then by radical, then by pinyon. The
specified sequence is applied to user-defined characters
(UDCs) as well as to standard characters.
When the -C option is specified, the default behavior of
the asort command is to use a depth-first sorting mechanism
to sort the input files. With the depth-first mechanism,
pairs of multibyte characters in a sort field are
compared by exhausting all the specified collating weights
and/or internal codes one at a time until the collating
order is resolved. Only when two characters are identical
is the next pair of characters compared. The depth-first
sorting mechanism is also called character sorting.
However, the asort command provides the -v option to use
the Asian VMS-like breadth-first sorting mechanism. With
the breadth-first mechanism, pairs of multibyte characters
in a sort field are compared using the first collating
weight for all the characters in the sort field first.
Only when two sets of data in a sort field are computed to
have the same collating order are succeeding collating
weights used for resolving the collating order. The
breadth-first sorting mechanism is sometimes called string
sorting.
Currently, the asort command is supported for use only
with Chinese codesets.
The asort command returns the following exit values: All
input files were output successfully, or -c was specified
and the input file was correctly sorted. If -c was specified,
the file was not ordered as specified, or if the -c
and -u options were both specified, two input lines were
found with equal keys. An error occurred.
Unless stated otherwise, the following examples assume the
locale setting is zh_TW.dechanyu: To perform character
sorting first by stroke and then by radical, enter: asort
-C"Stroke Radical" names
This command displays the lines in names sorted in
ascending order according to the number of strokes
in characters. If the number of strokes happen to
be the same for two characters, the radicals of the
characters determine how the characters are
ordered.An alternative short form of the same command
is as follows: asort -Csr names To perform
string sorting first by stroke and then by radical
in a way similar to the sort command available on
an Asian VMS system, enter: asort -v -C"Stroke Radical"
names
Commands: sort(1)
Functions: setlocale(3)
Files: locale(4)
Others: Chinese(5), i18n_intro(5)
asort(1)
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