Re: Collating order

[Bob Proulx]

Ole Laursen wrote:
> address@hidden (Bob Proulx) writes:
> > You can control the sorting order in ls and sort through the use of
> > the LANG, LC_COLLATE and LC_ALL variables.  If you don't want
> > internationalization then you can unset all of those or set the
> > appropriate ones to C.  All of unset or set to C or set to POSIX would
> > set a standard C/POSIX locale.
> 
> But I do want an internationalised sort order. I want it to respect
> the characters that are specific for Danish. I just don't want
> filenames with the same basename but different extensions to be mixed
> up in that way. :-)

Agreed.

> If you take a step back, do you really think that the sorting
> 
>   event.C
>   eventgenerator.C
>   eventgenerator.h
>   event.h
> 
> is the most useful?

No.  Therefore I set LC_COLLATE=C in my environment.  I turn off
localization for sorting in my environment and force a C/POSIX sort
ordering.  Others disagree however.

> Of course, if you don't want to do anything about it, I will stop
> wasting your time,

It is not that I don't want to do anything about it.  It is that I
can't do anything about it.  The locale is set by the user.  I have no
control over it.  (Sometimes the locale is set by the distro vendor
without the user's knowledge or control.  That is bad.)

If *I* were creating the locale data I would not have selected
dictionary sort ordering.  Then even if the user did specify the
locale sorting order it would still sort in standard form.  Obviously
others who actually created the locale specific collating sequence
disagreed and did create the locale data specifying dictionary sort
order.

At one level I think this is a fundamental difference in the mental
thinking between people who are comfortable using computers and people
who are comfortable using books.  For the locale data the book
collating order is the default.

I think we are in violent agreement.

I think what you really want to do is to create your own locale where
the collating sequence is "normal" while still providing you with
localization.

Bob