network.subr _aliasN handling

[dteske at FreeBSD.org]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Tom Evans [mailto:tevans.uk at googlemail.com]
> Sent: Friday, February 21, 2014 9:16 AM
> To: Devin Teske
> Cc: rc at freebsd.org
> Subject: Re: network.subr _aliasN handling
> 
> On Sat, Jan 4, 2014 at 11:25 AM, Teske, Devin <Devin.Teske at fisglobal.com>
> wrote:
> > On Jan 4, 2014, at 2:59 AM, Jason Hellenthal wrote:
> >
> >> I believe I know what you mean by that but in a way scares me when you
say
> sort as in mixing up the original order they appear in which I would find
to be
> really unattractive to most.
> >>
> >
> > It's not as scary as it sounds.
> >
> > The issue is that the variables are sorted alphabetically, instead of
> > numerically.
> >
> > Let's take four words: foo1, foo2, foo10, and foo20.
> > If you sort them alphabetically, you get:
> >
> >         foo1
> >         foo10
> >         foo2
> >         foo20
> >
> > You'll notice this when doing a directory listing, as that too is
> > sorted alphabetically.
> >
> > This is why "alias14" is run before "alias8" and "alias9". Because
> > they are processed in alphabetically sorted order. I didn't do
> > anything to sort the values, they came pre-sorted in alphabetic order.
> >
> > If I simply throw in a "| sort -n", then it will change it to
numerically sorted.
> > As you might expect, numerically sorting the above list would result in:
> >
> >         foo1
> >         foo2
> >         foo10
> >         foo20
> >
> > Trivial really. I'll throw a patch at you when I get some cycles (soon).
> 
> Wouldn't "|sort -n" sort foo10 before foo2?
> 
[Devin Teske] 

"| sort -R" seems to work. Though I'm less than pleased with the
explanation from the man-page...

	-R, --random-sort
		sort by random hash of keys

but... say what? Produces foo1, foo2, foo10, foo20 -- as-is desired -- but,
is this really what we want? I'm not sure I understand the above
description -- can someone explain this a bit more?
-- 
Devin

_____________
The information contained in this message is proprietary and/or confidential. If you are not the intended recipient, please: (i) delete the message and all copies; (ii) do not disclose, distribute or use the message in any manner; and (iii) notify the sender immediately. In addition, please be aware that any message addressed to our domain is subject to archiving and review by persons other than the intended recipient. Thank you.