The default sort order that RedHat uses changed in 7.x and later versions. The difference is shown as follows.
Old:
a b
a c
ab
ac
New:
a b
ab
a c
ac
In the new sorting order, the spaces are not treated like other alphanumeric characters, but are "secondary".
This is because the sort order was changed from "C" to "en_US". To get the old style of sorting back, simply set the environment variable "LC_ALL" to "C".
RedHat's sort command is not sorting by character value.
Moderator: jasonb