A "common" practice for handling duplicate names in a database is to append non-printable characters after the name, in the order of insertion. This is like using base 32 (numbers 0 to 31 ) for appended characters. This allows duplicates and retains the order of insertion. You don't have a limit since when you fill the first character, you just add another as "\0" and continue from there. That would be broken with Unicode::Collate.

The implication in the article was that you could replace 'sort' with 'Unicode::Collate'.

I’m afraid you’ve swapped my implication with your inference, as I implied no such thing — and what you’ve inferred in no way follows from what I wrote. Quoting myself, I wrote:
If you have code that purports to sort text that looks like this:
@sorted_lines = sort @lines;
Then all you have to get a dictionary sort is write instead:
use Unicode::Collate;
@sorted_lines = Unicode::Collate::->new->sort(@lines);

[download]
See the red part? Clearly, you do not have ‘code that purports to sort text’! Therefore, nothing I wrote applies to you.

You have code that blindly does a mindless numeric sort on code points, not an alphabetic sort on text. What you are doing is not an alphabetic sort. Plus sorting of textual representations of numbers is specifically outside the scope of the UCA.

Of course it’s trivial to modify the UCA sort to take care of your weirdo situation, such that it does a proper text sort on the text and a weirdo binary sort on the binary. But you have to tell it to do that. It doesn’t play mind games with you; here as always, one has to know what one is doing, and why.

In reply to Re^3: RFC: Is this the correct use of Unicode::Collate? by tchrist
in thread RFC: Is this the correct use of Unicode::Collate? by flexvault

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.