I want to sort data in a PostgreSQL table in the same way as in large Perl data structures. (To cache large data structures transparently in the db)

I read about i18n settings (initdb for P-sql, etc) and it looked easy. show all; in psql shows lc_collate eq en_US.UTF-8.

It doesn't even work for 7-bit ASCII strings! PostgreSQL ignores case and spaces (in strings -- not only postfix?!). Spaces inside strings are needed in some cases, so I can't just repack everything.

I saw that the "C" locale should sort on spaces, but then it won't sort i18n char sets correctly.

I use the standard Ubuntu P-SQL and Perl for this simple test.

A common sorting problem like this should either be very simple or discussed in lots of places. Since I can't seem to find those discussions, I'm missing something obvious? :-)

Update: Fixed language after I slept. :-)

Update 2: Ported to MySQL 5 and Collation works well, even supports case sensitivity (if I want it). My tests also run noticeably faster (with InnoDB). PostgreSQL seems behind MySQL in sql standard support in this area.

In reply to Postgresql and space characters by BerntB

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