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

Chapter 3 45

Using SORT/XL Interactively

Deﬁning Your Own Collating Sequence

The following example shows the results of the sort with and without altering the collating

sequence for the entries $ INVENTORY, DOLLAR INVENTORY, and EXPENSES:

SORT WITH ALTERED SORT WITH STANDARD

SEQUENCE SEQUENCE

DOLLAR INVENTORY DOLLAR INVENTORY

$ INVENTORY EXPENSES

EXPENSES $ INVENTORY

A commonly used alteration to the standard ASCII collating sequence is merging upper

case and lower case alphabetic characters. In the standard collating sequence, all upper

case characters precede all lower case characters. The standard ASCII collating sequence

is shown in the section, "Using >SHOW to Display the Collating Sequence". To order

alternating upper case and lower case characters, enter the following commands:

:SORT

HP32214A.01.00 SORT/3000 WED, JUN 3, 1987, 9:45 AM

>DATA IS ASCII, SEQUENCE IS ASCII

>ALTSEQ MERGE "A-Z" with "a-z"

>SHOW SEQUENCE

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

del 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 a B b C c D d E e F f G g H

h I i J j K k L l M m N n O o P

p Q q R r S s T t U u V v W w X

x Y y Z z [ \ ] ^ _ ` { | } ~ del

For additional information on altering collating sequences, refer to the >ALTSEQ command

in Chapter 6.