Thanks, but I already rtfm half a dozen times, for different p-gsql versions. (I even skimmed the relevant parts of the sql-99 standard and searched the relevant mailing lists.) Embarassingly, I still don't understand what to do.

Yes, it isn't really a Perl question, except that lots of/most people use db:s with Perl. Everyone else can sort on national character sets with sorting on spaces inside char strings? I must be doing some stupid mistake.

Too much grief; I'll check the MySQL docs re collation (I verified all sql features with the MySQL docs when writing the code).