numeric ordering

From: Viranga Ratnaike (viranga@mds.rmit.edu.au)
Date: Wed Sep 19 2001 - 21:02:24 EDT


Hi All,

        some questions, but first some background.

        This morning, Alan (my technical director) raised the issue of
        sorting section numbers.

    <Alan>

            1
            1.1
            1.1.1
            1.1.1.1
            1.1.1.2
            1.1.1.9
            1.1.1.10
            1.1.1.11
            1.2
            1.2.3
            1.10.3

        The ALPHANUMERIC sort order at present will whisk the integers and
        floats up to the top, but leave 1.1.1 etc back with the words.
        LEXICOGRAPHIC wont get it right when two digits are required.

        Examples of usage:

            Sort all versions by version number
            (where version numbers are like CVS)

                Sort section by section number.

    </Alan>

    I looked at UTR#10 and noticed

    -------------------------------------------------------------------------
    <UTR10>

        1.2 Non-Goals

        The Default Unicode Collation Element Table explicitly does
        not provide for the following features:

        1. ...
        2. numeric formatting: numbers composed of a string of digits or
           other numerics will not necessarily sort in numerical order.
        3. ...
        4. ...

    </UTR10>

    -------------------------------------------------------------------------

        Questions
        ---------

        1. Is there another document/algorithm/table that does provide
            guidelines for sorting numbers within strings? Something
            that deals with different scripts?

        2. In practice, are digits from different scripts ever mixed?
            If so, how do you sort two different digits which have the
            same numeric value?

Regards,

        Viranga

            



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