Peter Knapper wrote in a message to Jack Stein:

 JS> I have never used the original OS/2 sort, but I have 
 JS> sortorg.exe I renamed here, and it shows only a /R for 
 JS> reverse, and +n for the column?

 PK> The one situation I was wanting a replacement, the SORT
 PK> commandline was generated by another application so I did
 PK> not have the option of converting the parameters to the
 PK> different format without some trikery. 

Yes, that would definitly be a problem.  Highly unusual for an executible to
hard code an external application into it's code though.  I've done it myself
for personal stuff, but would not do it with anything published, particularly
a sort routine.

 PK> I also remember there
 PK> were other subtle differences such as explicit column
 PK> numbering started from 0 (GNU) instead of 1 (default sort),
 PK> although you could specify a different base if wanted. By
 PK> default it also seemed to handle data values as WORDS. To
 PK> get plain column based sorting required explicit range
 PK> specification as such. I found the differences annoying to
 PK> me at the time, although I could see how they could be
 PK> useful for other tasks. 

The only annoying thing I found was that IBM and MS would foist such a lame,
incompetant SORT utility on the public.  I'd be ashamed to have something that 
limited associated with my name, let alone a giant computer mega-company.  In
fact, a brief look at command.com and cmd.exe, compared to 4DOS, 4OS/2 and
Unix shells clearly shows that IBM and MS have had their collective heads
deeply placed where the sun don't shine for what, 15-20 years now?  
               
I know that has not much to do with solving your problem, but I need to lift
my arm pits and air them out occasionally.
               
                                       Jack 
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