SORT-MERGE/XL General User's Guide (32650-90883)

Chapter 6 69

SORT-MERGE/XL Commands

ALTSEQ

If you wish to do an alphabetic sorting in which each upper case letter collates ahead of the

corresponding lower case letter, use the command >ALTSEQ MERGE "A-Z" WITH "a-z".

The following six special characters follow the lower case z since the ﬁrst range precedes

the second range:

[ \ ] ^ _ and `

If the

modspec

is MERGE "a-z" WITH "A-Z", the same six characters precede the lower

case a. For additional information, refer to the "EXAMPLES" section below.

Consider this form of

modspec

as a shorthand for the

modspec

specifying EACH. For

example, the command, >ALTSEQ MERGE "A-Z" WITH "a-z", is equivalent to the longer

command >ALTSEQ "AaBb...Zz"= "AB...Zab...z", where ... represents all the

necessary characters.

EXAMPLES

The following examples show how to use various parameters with the >ALTSEQ command,

as well as the resulting collating sequences.

Standard ASCII Collating Sequence

To display the standard collating sequence enter the DATA IS ASCII, SEQUENCE IS

ASCII and >SHOW SEQUENCE commands, as shown below. Refer to this display, for

comparative purposes, to see what occurs to the collating sequence when you use >ALTSEQ

for various functions in the following examples.

:SORT

HP32214A.01.00 SORT/3000 THU, JUN 4, 1987, 8:10 AM

>DATA IS ASCII, SEQUENCE IS ASCII

>SHOW SEQUENCE

nul soh stx etx eot enq ack bel bs ht lf vt ff cr so si

dle dc1 dc2 dc3 dc4 nak syn etb can em sub esc fs gs rs us

sp ! " # $ % & ' ( ) * + , - . /

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 : ; < = > ?

@ A B C D E F G H I J K L M N 0

P Q R S T U V W X Y Z [ \ ] ^ _

` a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o

p q r s t u v w x y z { | } ~ del

Using the EACH Parameter

The following example shows how to use the >ALTSEQ command with the EACH parameter

followed by a

string

speciﬁcation:

:SORT

HP32214A.01.00 SORT/3000 THU, JUN 4, 1987, 8:10 AM