Linux console command issues: Sort

[Placebobecalp]

Hello I am a first time poster here and seeking help with the Sort command under linux. I am trying to merge 4 text files into a single sorted text file and currently the Sort command works when I specify this command:

sort file1 file2 file3 file4 > new file

However the problem is that the sort is behaving in a different way to what I prefer. It will sort in this order:

A
a
B
b

However I need to sort all capital letters before lower case letters, e.g.

A
B
a
b

Can this be done using the sort command?

Thankyou

[hunter_thom]

By default, it should sort by capitals first. You would need to pass the -f switch to sort to make it work otherwise. Is sort aliased in any way on your machine? Try:

$ type sort

[clowenstein]

Hello I am a first time poster here and seeking help with the Sort command under linux. I am trying to merge 4 text files into a single sorted text file and currently the Sort command works when I specify this command:

sort file1 file2 file3 file4 > new file

However the problem is that the sort is behaving in a different way to what I prefer. It will sort in this order:

A
a
B
b

However I need to sort all capital letters before lower case letters, e.g.

A
B
a
b

Can this be done using the sort command?

Thankyou

I think that sort(1) on your system is biased by the Locale settings. This is a moderately new idea, perhaps only 5 or so years old. To determine the locale, try the command:

$ locale

and look at the setting that controls sorting, namely LC_COLLATE.

You can work around this by adding to your sort command:

$ LC_COLLATE=POSIX; sort file1 file2 file3 file4 > new_file

This temporarily sets the locale to one in which capitals sort ahead of lower-case.
If you want to make this permanent, you can set the locale for yourself in your .bashrc
or set it for every user of the computer by editing /etc/sysconfig/i18n