colltbl(1M) — ADMINISTRATOR COMMANDS

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 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 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", β, 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 β 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 e
` have the same primary ordering but e comes before e
` in the secondary ordering. Thus the
word lever would be ordered before le
`ver, but le
`ver would be sorted before levitate. (Note that if e came before e
` in the primary ordering, then le
`ver would be sorted after levitate.)

The specification file consists of three types of statements:

1.codesetfilename

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

2.order isorder_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 isa;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 (for example, a for the lower-case letter a),

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

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 parenthesis 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 isa;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 β 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 (for example, 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:

     codesettelephone
      order isA;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.

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