order by question - Mailing list pgsql-general

Hello,

I am confused by how postgres 8,4..13 is sorting my data.

\d test
     Table "public.test"
  Column | Type | Modifiers
--------+------+-----------
  data   | text |

select * from test order by data;
    data
----------

  -
  --
  1
  11
  11F
  1F
  a
  b
  C
  F
  -F
   Feneric
   Generic
(14 rows)

The first row is a single space, the next row a single -, the next two -- .
What I don't understand is why the '-F', the ' Feneric' and the ' Generic' sort where they do.

I would expect the output to be like this:

    data
----------

   Feneric
   Generic
  -
  --
  -F
  1
  11
  11F
  1F
  a
  b
  C
  F
(14 rows)

client_encoding
-----------------
  SQL_ASCII

  lc_collate
-------------
  en_US.UTF-8

foxboxconfig=# show lc_ctype;
   lc_ctype
-------------
  en_US.UTF-8


Thanks for any clarification.


--
Stephen Clark