That wasn't sarcasm. I meant that if you mean to flatten a multi-level key into a string you find out the maximum length of each key component (or truncate and pad) and join them together in the proper order after padding. I include both a Lotus Domino @Formula and some perl code because I find both to be really, really typical. The Lotus Domino code is a bit simpler because the sorting is actually occuring just outside of this snippet in a View so all you see here is the serialization of a single record's keys.
REM { Sorting by three values for Lotus Domino (in a single view colum
+n). }
MaxLength := 255;
@Implode( @Transform(
A : B : C;
"key";
@If(
@Length( key ) > 255;
@Left( key; MaxLength );
key + @Repeat( @Char( 0 ); MaxLength - @Length( key ) ) )
# Sorting a three level hash in perl
my $a_len = max( map length(),
keys %h );
my $b_len = max( map length(),
map keys %$_,
values %h );
my $c_len = max( map length(),
map keys %$_,
map values %$_,
values %h );
my $fmt = "a$a_len a$b_len a$c_len";
# Assumes \0 is not present in any keys
my @sorted_keys =
( map [ unpack( "a$a_len a$b_len a$c_len ",
$_ ) ],
sort
map( {
my $a = $_;
map( {
my $b = $_;
map( { pack( "a$a_len a$b_len a$c_len",
$a, $b $_ ) }
keys %{ $h{ $a }{ $b } } )
} keys %{ $h{ $a } } )
} keys %h );
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