when I try to sort the following text file 'input': test1 3 test3 2 test 4 with the command sort input the output is exactly the input. Here is the output of od -bc input : 0000000 164 145 163 164 061 011 063 012 164 145 163 164 063 011 062 012 t e s t 1 \t 3 \n t e s t 3 \t 2 \n 0000020 164 145 163 164 011 064 012 t e s t \t 4 \n 0000027 It's just a tab separated file with two columns. When I do sort -k 2 The output changes to test3 2 test1 3 test 4 which is what I would expect. But if I do sort -k 1 nothing changes with respect to the input, whereas I would expect 'test' to sort before 'test1'. Finally, if I do cat input | cut -f 1 | sort I get test test1 test3 as expected. Is there a logical explanation for this? What exactly is sort supposed to do by default, something like: sort -k 1 ? My version of sort: sort (GNU coreutils) 7.4