Re: varchar sort ordering ignore blanks

["Luca Arzeni" <l.arzeni@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Jan 15, 2008 6:37 PM, Tom Lane <tgl@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Luca Arzeni <l.arzeni@xxxxxxxxxxx> writes:
> That is: the sort order in postgres 8.1.9 seems to ignore the blank.

This is expected behavior in most non-C locales.

> In all cases I'm using locale LATIN9 during DB creation, but I tested also
> with ASCII, UTF8 and LATIN1 encoding.

LATIN9 isn't a locale, it's an encoding.  Try "initdb --locale=C".

                       regards, tom lane

 

--------------------
I guess this has nothing to do with the encoding, but with the collation
rules used, which is governed by "lc_collate" parameter. See what you
get on both DBs for:

SHOW lc_collate ;

HTH,
Csaba.
-------------------

Thanks Tom, and Csaba

both of you hit the problem: actually Postgres 7.4.7 has a C locale and Postgres 8.1 has US.UTF8 locale. Setting locale to locale=C or locale=POSIX for release 
8.1 solved this issue, but it opens another one: if I use locale=C, I get

XXXX A
XXXX C
XXXXB

as sort order, but this setting gives me an error when it cames to:

XXXX d
XXXX e
XXXX f

XXXX è

because the right sort ordering should be:

XXXX d

XXXX e


XXXX è




XXXX f

So the problem is:

- C or POSIX locale is OK with blanks but fails on locale specific vowels
- LATIN9 locale is OK with vowels but ignores blanks

Is there any way to consider blanks meaningfull AND sort properly locale specific vowels ?

I don't know what SQL standard says about this issue, but I'm sure that in Italy you sort names considering vowels AND blanks!

Thanks, Luca