Why is the sort-test ignoring ':', '(' and ';' and trailing space

[Petter Reinholdtsen]

[Keld Jørn Simonsen]
> It is probeably not ignoring these characters, but handling them as
> special characters, which are ignored at the first 3 levels, and
> then handled at level 4. This is in accordance with many national
> and international standards.

No, you are mistaken.  It is splitting the lines on these characters,
and ignoring all white in front of them and the rest of the line.

So for a line like this

 "foo bar ; dummy entry"

it only compare "foo bar".