mksort -- Command

Sort the standard input, allowing arbitrarily long lines
/usr/lib/mail/mksort [ -f ] [ file ...  ]

The command  mksort reads lines of  text, sorts them by  the first field in
each line, then writes them to  the standard output.  It usually is used by
system administrators to help prepare  the data files used by smail. Unlike
the COHERENT command sort, mksort  can read and process an arbitrarily long
line of text.

The first field within a line of input is delimited either by a white-space
character or  a colon `:'.   A line can  be of any  length, as long  as the
entire  input  can  be  stored  in  memory.  Command-lind  option  -f  (for
``fold'') tells  mksort to ignore case  when it sorts its  input; with this
option, the letter  `A' equals the letter `a', and  `a' is always less than
`B'.

If its command line does not  name an input file, mksort reads the standard
input.   A file  name of  `-'  indicates the  standard input;  this permits
mksort to mingle the contents of  one or more files with what it reads from
the standard input.

Example

The following example demonstrates  how to use mksort with mkline. Consider
file aliases, which contains the following aliasing information:

    Postmaster:hustead # Ted Hustead, jr.
    UUCP-Postmasters: tron, chongo   # namei contacts
        yamato  # kremvax contact
    tron:      tron@namei.uucp (Ronald S. Karr)
    yamato:    yamato@kremvax.ussr.comm (Yamato T. Yankelovich)
    chongo:    chongo@eek.uts.amdahl.com (Landon Curt Noll)

Given this file, the command

    mkline aliases | mksort -f

yields:

    chongo:chongo@eek.uts.amdahl.com
    Postmaster:hustead
    tron:tron@namei.uucp
    UUCP-Postmasters:tron,chongo yamato
    yamato:yamato@kremvax.ussr.comm

See Also

commands,
mail [overview],
mkline,
mkdbm,
pathalias,
smail

Notes

This command is not used by COHERENT's implementation of smail.

Copyright © 1987, 1988 Ronald S. Karr and Landon Curt Noll.  Copyright
© 1992 Ronald S. Karr.

For  details on  the distribution rights  and restrictions  associated with
this software, see file COPYING, which  is included with the source code to
the smail system; or type the command: smail -bc.

© 2012 by Stephen A. Ness