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colltbl(1M)

create collation database

From the original Amiga UNIX 2.1 manual. Some things it mentions may not be in this release.

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,sB, _ 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 striBg _ 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 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  semi-
    colons,  that  defines the collating sequence.  The spe-
    cial 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 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 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  men-
tioned  above  was to substitute a single character with
two characters, as with the substitutionwBth_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/LC_COLLATE

                LC_COLLATE database for locale

/usr/lib/locale/C/colltbl_C