colltbl(1M) DG/UX R4.11MU05 colltbl(1M)
NAME
colltbl - create collation database
SYNOPSIS
colltbl [ file | - ]
colltbl -d [ file ]
DESCRIPTION
The colltbl command without the -d option 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 a user with appropriate privilege
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 or LANG environment variable appropriately (see environ(5)
or setlocale(3C)).
With the -d option, colltbl dumps to its standard output a text
version of the LC_COLLATE collation table in file file. If no input
file is specified, the collation table in use for the current locale
is dumped. You can modify the resulting text file, and use it as
input to colltbl, to produce a modified LC_COLLATE collation table
file. This file may be used to either replace the existing
LC_COLLATE file in an existing locale, or to create a new locale.
However, you must never modify any of the files (including
LC_COLLATE) in /usr/lib/locale/C, the C locale.
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", 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 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 ` have the same primary
ordering but e comes before ` in the secondary ordering. Thus
the word lever would be ordered before l`ver, but l`ver would be
sorted before levitate. (Note that if e came before ` in the
primary ordering, then l`ver 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 orderlist
orderlist 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 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 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;`);f;...;z;\
{1;...;9};A;...;Z
In the above example, e and ` 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 ß 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.
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.
DIAGNOSTICS
Exit code is 0 on successful completion, and >0 if an error occurs.
SEE ALSO
memory(3C), setlocale(3C), strcoll(3C), string(3C), strxfrm(3C),
regexpr(3G), environ(5).
Licensed material--property of copyright holder(s)