colltbl(1M) colltbl(1M)
NAME
colltbl - create collation database
SYNOPSIS
colltbl [ file | - ]
DESCRIPTION
The colltbl command takes as input a specification file, file, that
describes the collating sequence for a particular language and
creates a database that can be read by strxfrm(3C) and strcoll(3C).
strxfrm(3C) transforms its first argument and places the result in
its second argument. The transformed string is such that it can be
correctly ordered with other transformed strings by using strcmp(3C),
strncmp(3C) or memcmp(3C). strcoll(3C) transforms its arguments and
does a comparison.
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 LCCOLLATE 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 LCCOLLATE
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 codeset. 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", ,, 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 , is replaced with ss
during sorting.
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⊕ Ignoring certain characters in the codeset during collation. For
example, if - were ignored during collation, then the strings
re-locate and relocate would be equal.
⊕ Secondary ordering between characters. In the case where two
characters are sorted together in the collation sequence, (i.e.,
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 e have the same primary
ordering but e comes before e in the secondary ordering. Thus
the word lever would be ordered before lever, but lever would be
sorted before levitate. (Note that if e came before e in the
primary ordering, then lever would be sorted after levitate.)
The specification file consists of three types of statements:
1. codeset filename
filename is the name of the output file to be created by colltbl.
2. order is order_list
order_list is a list of symbols, separated by semicolons, that
defines the collating sequence. The special symbol, B...,
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 lower_case 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 (e.g., a for the lower-case letter a),
⊕ in octal representation (e.g., \141 or 0141 for the letter
a), or
⊕ in hexadecimal representation (e.g., \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 parenthesis are assigned the same primary
ordering but different secondary ordering. Symbols enclosed in
curly brackets are assigned only the same primary ordering. For
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example,
order is a;b;c;ch;d;(e;e);f;...;z;\
{1;...;9};A;...;Z
In the above example, e and e 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.
3. 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 that was mentioned
above was to substitute a single character with two characters,
as with the substitution of , with ss in German.
The substitute statement is optional. The order is and codeset
statements must appear in the specification file.
Any lines in the specification file with a # in the first column are
treated as comments and are ignored. Empty lines are also ignored.
EXAMPLE
The following example shows the collation specification required to
support a hypothetical telephone book sorting sequence.
The sorting sequence is defined by the following rules:
a. Upper and lower case letters must be sorted together, but upper
case letters have precedence over lower case letters.
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b. All special characters and punctuation should be ignored.
c. Digits must be sorted as their alphabetic counterparts (e.g., 0
as zero, 1 as one).
d. The Ch, ch, CH combinations must be collated between C and D.
e. V and W, v and w must be collated together.
The input specification file to colltbl will contain:
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/LCCOLLATE
LCCOLLATE database for locale
/usr/lib/locale/C/colltblC
input file used to construct LCCOLLATE in the
default locale.
SEE ALSO
memory(3C), setlocale(3C), strcoll(3C), string(3C), strxfrm(3C),
environ(5) in the Programmer's Reference Manual.
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