Re: Patch for collation using ICU

On Sun, 27 Mar 2005, Palle Girgensohn wrote:

>
>
> --On l�rdag, mars 26, 2005 08.16.01 -0800 Stephan Szabo
> <sszabo@megazone.bigpanda.com> wrote:
>
> > On Sat, 26 Mar 2005, Palle Girgensohn wrote:
> >> I've noticed a couple of things about using the ICU patch vs. pristine
> >> pg-8.0.1:
> >>
> >> - ORDER BY is case insensitive when using ICU. This might break the SQL
> >> standard (?), but sure is nice :)
> >
> > Err, I think if your system implements strcoll correctly 8.0.1 can do this
> > if the chosen collation is set up that way (or at least naive tests I've
> > done seem to imply that). Or are you speaking about C locale?
>
> No, I doubt this.
>
> Example: set up a cluster:
> $ initdb -E LATIN1 --locale=sv_SE.ISO8859-1
> $ createdb foo
> CREATE DATABASE
> $ psql foo
> foo=# create table bar (val text);
> CREATE TABLE
> foo=# insert into bar values ('aaa');
> INSERT 18354409 1
> foo=# insert into bar values ('BBB');
> INSERT 18354412 1
> foo=# select val from bar order by val;
>  val
> -----
>  BBB
>  aaa
> (2 rows)
>
>
> Order by is not case insensitive. It shouldn't be for any system, AFAIK. As

It is on my machine... for the same test:

foo=# select val from bar order by val;val
-----aaaBBB
(2 rows)

I think this just implies even greater breakage of either the collation or
strcoll on the system you're trying on. ;)  Which, of course, is a fairly
reasonable reason to offer an alternative.  Especially if it's generically
useful.