On Tue, Feb 9, 2010 at 1:42 AM, Fredric Fredricson <Fredric.Fredricson@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > Justin Graf wrote: > > On 2/8/2010 7:09 PM, Fredric Fredricson wrote: > > Hi! > New to the list with a question that I cannot find the answer to in the > manual or on the internet but I suspect is trivial. If somebody could point > me in the correct direction I would be greatful. It seems you're seeking ASCII or C locale sorting. > # select * from tmp order by x ; > x > -------- > - > + > 1 > -2 > +3 > 4 > a > aa > ---a-b > ac > -b > c > (12 rows) > > In what universe would you expect this sort order? And how to make it > 'sane'? In a library perhaps? > I found a work-around, "order by ascii(x),x", but this continues to baffle > me. It's quite simple. en_US locale, and others like it sort by ignoring things like white space and noise characters so that only letters and numbers count, and things like ñ sort right near n, not at the end or beginning of the table. > It seems to me that if there are any alphanumeric characters in the string > the rest are ignored in the sort. > Where did this rule come from? > I really would appreciate an explanation for this behavior. It's been around quite some time. I'm afraid I'll have to defer to some other expert on the exact history. -- Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general
