Punctuation is sorted by ASCII order (rule 2.B).
$ touch 1.0.5_src.tar.gz 1.0_src.tar.gz $ ls -v -1 1.0.5_src.tar.gz 1.0_src.tar.gz
Why is 1.0.5_src.tar.gz listed before 1.0_src.tar.gz?
Based on the version-sort ordering rules, the strings are broken down into the following parts:
1 vs 1 (rule 3, all digits) . vs . (rule 2, all non-digits) 0 vs 0 (rule 3) . vs _src.tar.gz (rule 2) 5 vs empty string (no more bytes in the file name) _src.tar.gz vs empty string
The fourth parts (‘.’ and ‘_src.tar.gz’) are compared lexically by ASCII order. The ‘.’ (ASCII value 46) is less than ‘_’ (ASCII value 95) – and should be listed before it.
Hence, 1.0.5_src.tar.gz is listed first.
If a different byte appears instead of the underscore (for example, percent sign ‘%’ ASCII value 37, which is less than dot’s ASCII value of 46), that file will be listed first:
$ touch 1.0.5_src.tar.gz 1.0%zzzzz.gz 1.0%zzzzz.gz 1.0.5_src.tar.gz
The same reasoning applies to the following example, as ‘.’ with ASCII value 46 is less than ‘/’ with ASCII value 47:
$ cat input5 3.0/ 3.0.5 $ sort -V input5 3.0.5 3.0/