Re: RES: Issue on Varchar Ordering - Mailing list pgsql-admin

From Alvaro Herrera
Subject Re: RES: Issue on Varchar Ordering
Date
Msg-id 20060817145254.GM318@alvh.no-ip.org
Whole thread Raw
In response to RES: Issue on Varchar Ordering  (Erika Terahata Torres Prada e Silva - MPS <erika.prada@previdencia.gov.br>)
List pgsql-admin
Erika Terahata Torres Prada e Silva - MPS wrote:
> Peter,
>
> Thanks for answering.
>
> But it's not correct to my language pt_BR and it worked correctly with
> PostgreSQL at Windows and FreeBSD. I have this problem only with Debian and
> now I'm looking for some Debian related issue.

It's still correct -- it's the ordering you'll find on the telephone
guide.  It works the same for portuguese and for spanish and a lot
others.  The problem with going to C locale (POSIX), as suggested in a
related follow-up, is that it sorts by byte value, which is not at all
correct when you start sorting stuff that contains funny letters
(accented vowels, etc).  It works for english people just because they
don't worry about accents at all.  I wonder if portuguese has special
sorting rules for "nh", for example?  You'll lose that if you just
change to the C locale.

I think you _can_ define a collation on which spaces are significant,
but it's also a significant amount of work.  (And IMHO not at all worth
the trouble.)

--
Alvaro Herrera                                http://www.CommandPrompt.com/
PostgreSQL Replication, Consulting, Custom Development, 24x7 support

pgsql-admin by date:

Previous
From: Scott Marlowe
Date:
Subject: Re: Monitoring error messages
Next
From: "Daniel Medina"
Date:
Subject: unsubscribe