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Welcome to BSD sort homepage

What is BSD sort?

BSD sort is BSD-licenced implementation if Unix(TM) sort(1) utility. Feature wise, it's on-par with GNU sort(1), but is faster and smaller. BSD sort(1) uses radixsort(3) as the core of the sorting functionality itself.

BSD sort is developed within NetBSD, and is distributed as part of it since 2001, replacing formerly used GNU sort(1). The first official NetBSD release BSD sort would appear to would be the soon to be released NetBSD 1.6.

Since it's usable to have a really free sort(1) implementation around, this project has formed, which wraps the NetBSD sort with portability code, so that the software can be compiled and used also on other platforms.

Who works on BSD sort

The initial utility was written by Peter McIlroy for BSD4.4. The utility was discovered, brought into modern age and bashed into shape by Ben Harris <bjh21@NetBSD.org> and Jaromir Dolecek <jdolecek@NetBSD.org>. Current maintainer of BSD sort is Jaromir Dolecek.

Which OSes BSD sort runs on?

This BSD sort uses GNU autoconf to catch and handle compatibility issues. It comes with it's own radixsort implementation (taken from NetBSD libc), which is used on systems which lack this function. Thus, the software should be fairly portable.

So far, it was confirmed working on NetBSD and Linux.

Downloads

BSD sort releases are available on its SourceForge download area.

The most current release 1.0 is available there as bsdsort-1.0.tar.gz.

Which operating system is best?

Guess what? Oh yes, NetBSD :) NetBSD rules.

See the NetBSD pages for further information.