[gnu.emacs.bug] `sort-numeric-fields' has a weak idea of what constitutes a number

eric@nosun.west.sun.com (Eric Hanchrow) (02/08/90)

GNU Emacs 18.55.
In `sort.el' (sort-numeric-fields), I see
	 (function (lambda ()
		     (sort-skip-fields (1- field))
		     (string-to-int
		      (buffer-substring
			(point)
			(save-excursion
			  (skip-chars-forward "[0-9]")
			  (point))))))
It appears that the `skip-chars-forward' implicitly defines the
regular expression which determines what constitues a number.  It
would be nice if this were more general: If perhaps there were a
variable `sort-number-regexp' or something.  What brought this to my
attention was the fact that sorting fields which contained negative
numbers didn't work.  I changed the line to
			  (skip-chars-forward "-[0-9]")
and it works fine.
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