colltbl(1M)

Synopsis

Description

If no input file is supplied, stdin is read.

The output file produced contains the database with collating sequence information in a form usable by system commands and routines. The name of this output file is the value you assign to the keyword codeset read in from file. Before this file can be used, it must be installed in the /usr/lib/locale/locale directory with the name LC_COLLATE by someone who is super-user or a member of group bin. locale corresponds to the language area whose collation sequence is described in file. This file must be readable by user, group, and other; no other permissions should be set. To use the collating sequence information in this file, set the LC_COLLATE environment variable appropriately [see environ(5) or setlocale(3C)].

The colltbl command can support languages whose collating sequence can be completely described by the following cases:

• Ordering of single characters within the code set. For example, in Swedish, ``V'' is sorted after ``U'', before ``X'', and with ``W'' (``V'' and ``W'' are considered identical as far as sorting is concerned).

• Ordering of ``double characters'' in the collation sequence. For example, in Spanish, ``ch'' and ``ll'' are collated after ``c'' and ``l'', respectively.

• Ordering of a single character as if it consists of two characters. For example, in German, the ``sharp s,'' ``ß'', is sorted as ``ss''. This is a special instance of the next case below.

• Substitution of one character string with another character string. In the example above, the string ``ß'' is replaced with ``ss'' during sorting.

• Ignoring certain characters in the code set during collation. For example, if - were ignored during collation, then the strings ``re-locate'' and ``relocate'' would compare as equal.

• Secondary ordering between characters. In the case where two characters are sorted together in the collation sequence, (that is, they have the same primary ordering), there is sometimes a secondary ordering that is used if two strings are identical except for characters that have the same primary ordering. For example, in French, the letters ``e'' and ``é'' have the same primary ordering but ``e'' comes before ``é'' in the secondary ordering. Thus the word ``lever'' would be ordered before ``léver'', but ``léver'' would be sorted before ``levitate''.
  (Note that if ``e'' came before ``é'' in the primary ordering, then ``léver'' would be sorted after ``levitate''.)

codeset filename

filename is the name of the output file to be created by colltbl.

order is order_list

order_list is a list of symbols, separated by semicolons, that defines the collating sequence. The special symbol ... specifies symbols that are lexically sequential in a short-hand form. For example, order is a;b;c;d;...;x;y;z would specify the list of lowercase letters. Of course, this could be further compressed to just a;...;z.

A symbol can be up to two bytes in length and can be represented in any one of the following ways:

• the symbol itself (for example, ``a'' for the lowercase letter ``a'')

• in octal representation (for example, \141 or 0141 for the letter ``a'')

• in hexadecimal representation (for example, \x61 or 0x61 for the letter ``a'')

Any combination of these may be used as well.

The backslash character, ``\'' , is used for continuation. No characters are permitted after the backslash character.

Symbols enclosed in parentheses are assigned the same primary ordering but different secondary ordering. Symbols enclosed in curly brackets are assigned only the same primary ordering. For example,

order is a;b;c;ch;d;(e;é);f;...;z;\
         {1;...;9};A;...;Z

In the above example, ``e'' and ``é'' are assigned the same primary ordering and different secondary ordering, digits 1 through 9 are assigned the same primary ordering and no secondary ordering. Only primary ordering is assigned to the remaining symbols. Notice how double letters can be specified in the collating sequence (letter ``ch'' comes between ``c'' and ``d'').

If a character is not included in the order is statement, it is excluded from the ordering and will be ignored during sorting.

substitute string with repl

The substitute statement substitutes the string string with the string repl.
This can be used, for example, to provide rules to sort the abbreviated month names numerically:

substitute "Jan" with "01"
substitute "Feb" with "02"
...
substitute "Dec" with "12"

A simpler use of the substitute statement would be to substitute a single character with two characters, as with the substitution of ``ß'' with ``ss'' in German.

Any lines in the specification file with a ``#'' in the first column are treated as comments and are ignored. Empty lines are also ignored.

Examples

The sorting sequence is defined by the following rules:

• Upper- and lowercase letters must be sorted together, but uppercase letters have precedence over lowercase letters.

• All special characters and punctuation should be ignored.

• Digits must be sorted as their alphabetic counterparts (for example, ``0'' as zero, ``1'' as one).

• The ``Ch'', ``ch'', ``CH'' combinations must be collated between ``C'' and ``D''.

• ``V'' and ``W'', ``v'' and ``w'' must be collated together.

   codeset	telephone
   

   order is	A;a;B;b;C;c;CH;Ch;ch;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;W};{v;w};X;x;Y;y;Z;z
   

   substitute "0" with "zero"
   substitute "1" with "one"
   substitute "2" with "two"
   substitute "3" with "three"
   substitute "4" with "four"
   substitute "5" with "five"
   substitute "6" with "six"
   substitute "7" with "seven"
   substitute "8" with "eight"
   substitute "9" with "nine"

Files

/lib/locale/locale/LC_COLLATE

LC_COLLATE database for locale

/usr/lib/locale/C/colltbl_C

input file used to construct LC_COLLATE in the default locale.

References