What's the difference between --general-numeric-sort and --numeric-sort options in gnu sort

Question

sort provides two kinds of numeric sort. This is from the man page:

   -g, --general-numeric-sort
          compare according to general numeric         


        

Answer 1

You should be careful with your locale. For example, you might intend to sort a floating number (like 2.2) whereas your locale might expect the use of a comma (like 2,2).

As reported in this forum, you may have wrong results using the -n or -g flags.

In my case I use:

LC_ALL=C sort -k 6,6n file

in order to sort the 6th column that contains:

2.5
3.7
1.4

in order to obtain

1.4
2.5
3.7