Re: Germa Umlaut (was: String name and Character Name)

From: Hans Aberg (haberg@math.su.se)
Date: Tue Apr 26 2005 - 05:43:49 CST

  • Next message: Erkki Kolehmainen: "Re: Germa Umlaut (was: String name and Character Name)"

    At 14:23 +0300 2005/04/26, Erkki Kolehmainen wrote:
    >in Swedish the letters å (a with ring above), ä
    >(a with diaeresis) and ö (o with diaeresis)
    >collate as separate letters after z in level 1.

    In German, I recall (correct me if I am wrong)
    that ä is sorted the same as a, except that ä is
    put later if the words are otherwise identical.
    Thus
       lab läb lac
    If ä would have been treated as a separate
    character in lexicographical order, the sorting
    would have been:
       lab lac läb
    The Swedish alphabet does not really have w, but
    it is sorted as though equal to v, in a similar
    fashion:
       avk awk avl
    In English, where v and w are sorted as distinct characters, one gets:
       avk avl awk

    This just illustrates how difficult it is to
    properly pin down the notion of a character, as
    it may vary with the context.

    -- 
       Hans Aberg
    


    This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Tue Apr 26 2005 - 05:45:19 CST