COMMAND NAME:	sort

TYPE:		Action

SYNTAX:		"sort time"
		"sort procdate"
		"sort snr"
		"sort length"
		"sort baseline"
		"sort triangle"
		"sort frequency"
		"sort sourcename"
		"sort qcode"
		"sort experiment"
		"sort rootcode"
		"sort family"

DESCRIPTION:

Sorts the data in memory according the the value of the
field specified in the command.  The sort is stable, in that
entries in the database which compare equal will retain
their original sort order.  Thus any combination of sort
key priorities can be applied by repeated execution of "sort".

The only consequence of sorting the data is that the output
of the "write" command will be sorted.  The various "aedit"
commands do not care whether the data are sorted or not, and in
fact operate on unsorted data whether sort has been executed or
not.  Flagging and unflagging data does not affect the sort
order ... sorting is done on all the data.

The sort keys "snr", "length" and "frequency" have no effect on
root or corel data.  In addition, the sort keys "baseline" and
"qcode" have no effect on root data.  The "snr" sort key uses
the bispectral snr for triangle records.

Note that reading in additional data destroys any sort order.  The
effect is the same as issuing the "unsort" command, in that
the sort order information for the original dataset is explicitly
discarded, and the original sort order restored.

The special key "family" causes the "write" command to write data
to disk grouped by root family.  Each family has the root record
(if present), followed by the corel records (if present), followed
by the fringe records (if present).