GNU bug report logs - #59275
Unexpected return value of `string-collate-lessp' on Mac

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From: Ihor Radchenko <yantar92 <at> posteo.net>
To: Eli Zaretskii <eliz <at> gnu.org>
Cc: 59275 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: bug#59275: Unexpected return value of `string-collate-lessp' on Mac
Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2022 01:34:09 +0000

Eli Zaretskii <eliz <at> gnu.org> writes:
>> > string-collate-lessp is inherently platform- (and locale-) dependent.
>> > Don't use it if you want consistent results across platforms and
>> > locales.
>> 
>> Is there a better alternative?
>
> Alternative to do what job?

Reliable sorting.
In particular, I am looking for a better PREDICATE argument for
`sort-subr' for case-sensitive and case-insensitive sorting of strings.

>> Also, do I miss something, or is this pitfall not documented in the
>> docstring of `string-collate-lessp'?
>
> It isn't? then what is this about:
>
>   This function obeys the conventions for collation order in your
>   locale settings.  For example, punctuation and whitespace characters
>   might be considered less significant for sorting:
>
>   (sort '("11" "12" "1 1" "1 2" "1.1" "1.2") 'string-collate-lessp)
>     => ("11" "1 1" "1.1" "12" "1 2" "1.2")
>   [...]
>   To emulate Unicode-compliant collation on MS-Windows systems,
>   bind ‘w32-collate-ignore-punctuation’ to a non-nil value, since
>   the codeset part of the locale cannot be "UTF-8" on MS-Windows.

The above sounds like we just need to worry about some edge cases where
different approaches may exist to sorting. Like with punctuation,
numbers, and spaces.

Having

  (string-collate-lessp "a" "B" "C" t)  ; => nil

is totally unexpected because case-insensitive "a"<"B"<"C" sounds like
the only reasonable outcome.

I'd like the warning to be even more prominent.

Feel free to disagree.

-- 
Ihor Radchenko // yantar92,
Org mode contributor,
Learn more about Org mode at <https://orgmode.org/>.
Support Org development at <https://liberapay.com/org-mode>,
or support my work at <https://liberapay.com/yantar92>

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