Re: Mac ordering with locales

On Feb 21, 2008, at 12:01 PM, Tom Lane wrote:

> Pascal Cohen <pcohen@wimba.com> writes:
>> The fact is that works on Linux and win but under Mac I always get
>> the
>> ordering with 'default' C locale (I displayed all the lc_* and all
>> are
>> right set)
>
> Yeah, this has been complained of before, eg here
> http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-general/2005-11/msg00047.php
> and here
> http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-general/2004-04/msg00564.php
>
> It seems to be a deficiency in Apple's locale support.  The second
> message is interesting since it indicates that "smart" sorting is
> available somewhere/somehow under OS X, but nobody here knows how
> to get at it :-(

The function is "CFStringCompareWithOptionsAndLocale()".

http://developer.apple.com/documentation/CoreFoundation/Reference/
CFStringRef/Reference/reference.html#//apple_ref/c/func/
CFStringCompareWithOptionsAndLocale

It is obviously not a portable function (beyond the Core Foundation
sources being open and available), so there may not be any interest
in having this in PostgreSQL.

Also, which MacOS X version is under discussion here? Could the
strcoll() bug have been fixed in Leopard?

Cheers,
M