I wrote: > I did do some experimentation and found that among the ASCII characters > (ie, codes 32-126), nearly all the non-C locales on my Fedora machine > sort Z last and z next-to-last or vice versa. Most of the remainder > sort digits last and z or Z as the last non-digit character. Since Z is > not that close to the end of the sort order in C locale, however, z > seems the best bet. With still further experimentation, it seems that doesn't work very well, because the locales that sort digits last also seem not to discriminate against digits in their first pass. What did seem to work was: * Determine which of the strings "Z", "z", "y", "9" is seen as largest by strcoll(). * Append this string to the given input. * Search (using the CVS-HEAD make_greater_string logic) for a string greater than that. This rule works for all the locales I have installed ... but I don't have any Far Eastern locales installed. Also, my test cases are only covering ASCII characters, and I believe many locales have some non-ASCII letters that sort after 'Z'. I'm not sure how hard we need to try to cover those corner cases, though. It is ultimately only an estimate... regards, tom lane ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 6: explain analyze is your friend