Jorge_de_Burgos has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Hi Monks. I wonder if any of you has tried to sort a list of names under a Spanish locale system. I find the output puzzling, and you can't blame it on my knowledge of Spanish since that's my native tongue.

I mean, whereas this all-English program:

#!/usr/bin/perl

my @list = ('maceira', 'mac alister', 'mac loughlin', 'san esteban', '
+sangregorio', 'san zoilo');

print "$_\n" for sort @list;

[download]

outputs this (as expected in the default English perl dialect):

mac alister
mac loughlin
maceira
san esteban
san zoilo
sangregorio

[download]
this supposedly Spanified program: 
#!/usr/bin/perl
use locale;

my @list = ('maceira', 'mac alister', 'mac loughlin', 'san esteban', '
+sangregorio', 'san zoilo');

print "$_\n" for sort @list;

[download]
outputs this non-Spanish order: 
mac alister
maceira
mac loughlin
san esteban
sangregorio
san zoilo

[download]

Now please keep in mind that:

  1. I haven't used any high ASCII character in the list.
  2. My system locale is "es_AR.UTF-8".
  3. We Spanish-speaking people would expect the sorted list to come out with all "mac something" and all "san something" before "maceira" and "sangregorio" respectively, making these longer words come out after surnames whose first word is shorter ("mac" and "san").

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Spanish locale and name sorting
by spectre9 (Beadle) on May 01, 2009 at 19:08 UTC

    I'm no expert, but after reading perllocale it seems that checking the LANG environmetal variable might relevant to your issue... It is possible to override the language selection of a locale after the fact within many Unix systems. Sometimes I've seen an LC_LANG variable as well, or NLS_LANG (I think Oracle uses NLS_ variables for instance)

    Might you examine your %ENV{} in the running Perl program and report back the LC_ variables? And anything that contains lang? These usually are locale related if my memory serves.

    Here's some quick code that might work -- reply back with the output if your still 'bugged' by the sort order and I'll be happy to take a closer look. I know Spanish (Madrid, Spain) somewhat well and understand what your trying to achieve. 

    foreach my $env (keys %ENV){
   if($env =~ /^LC_/i || $env =~ /lang/i){
       print "$env => $ENV{$env}\n";
      }
}

    [download]

    "Strictly speaking, there are no enlightened people, there is only enlightened activity." -- Shunryu Suzuki
[reply]
[d/l]
[select]
      Right away to your suggestion, spectr9. This is my output from your routine: 
      LANG => es_AR.UTF-8
GDM_LANG => es_AR.UTF-8

      [download]
      That's the correct locale for my system here in Buenos Aires. (I wouldn't like to change that by the way.)
[reply]
[d/l]
Re: Spanish locale and name sorting
by Anonymous Monk on May 02, 2009 at 01:30 UTC
    We Spanish-speaking people would expect the sorted list to come out with all "mac something" and all "san something" before "maceira" and "sangregorio" respectively, making these longer words come out after surnames whose first word is shorter ("mac" and "san").

    Maybe you expect wrong thing? 

    #!/usr/bin/perl --

use strict;
use warnings;

localsort("C");
localsort("Spanish - Argentina");

sub localsort
{
    use POSIX qw(setlocale LC_CTYPE);
    my( $wantlocale ) = @_;
    my $curlocale = setlocale(LC_CTYPE);

    my $setlocale = setlocale(LC_CTYPE,$wantlocale);

    if( not $setlocale  ){
        print "Couldn't switch locale from ($curlocale) to ($wantlocal
+e).\n";
    } else {
        print "Current locale is ($setlocale).\n";
        my @list = ('maceira', 'mac alister', 'mac loughlin',
        'san esteban', 'sangregorio', 'san zoilo');

        my @yes = do {
            use locale;
            sort @list;
        };

        my @no = do {
            no locale;
            sort @list;
        };

        printf "    %-20s %-20s %-20s\n", qw[unsorted use-locale no-lo
+cale ];
        print '- ' x 33,"\n";

        for my $i( 0 .. $#list ){
            printf "%3d %-20s %-20s %-20s\n", $i, $list[$i], $yes[$i],
+ $no[$i];
        }
    }

    print '- ' x 33,"\n";
    setlocale(LC_CTYPE,$curlocale);#restore
}

__END__
Current locale is (C).
    unsorted             use-locale           no-locale
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
  0 maceira              mac alister          mac alister
  1 mac alister          mac loughlin         mac loughlin
  2 mac loughlin         maceira              maceira
  3 san esteban          san esteban          san esteban
  4 sangregorio          san zoilo            san zoilo
  5 san zoilo            sangregorio          sangregorio
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Current locale is (Spanish_Spain.1252).
    unsorted             use-locale           no-locale
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
  0 maceira              mac alister          mac alister
  1 mac alister          mac loughlin         mac loughlin
  2 mac loughlin         maceira              maceira
  3 san esteban          san esteban          san esteban
  4 sangregorio          san zoilo            san zoilo
  5 san zoilo            sangregorio          sangregorio
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

    [download]
[reply]
[d/l]
      Maybe you expect wrong thing?

      Why would you say that? The output of your code on your system shows that our expectations are right -- if you use some 1252 (I think that means Windows) locale instead of UTF-8.

      This is the output of your program on my system.

      Current locale is (C).
    unsorted             use-locale           no-locale           
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 
  0 maceira              mac alister          mac alister         
  1 mac alister          maceira              mac loughlin        
  2 mac loughlin         mac loughlin         maceira             
  3 san esteban          san esteban          san esteban         
  4 sangregorio          sangregorio          san zoilo           
  5 san zoilo            san zoilo            sangregorio         
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 
Couldn't switch locale from (es_AR.UTF-8) to (Spanish - Argentina).
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

      [download]
      I am looking for a solution to a problem that arises under Spanish UTF-8 locales, where sorting order treats the space character as non existent.
[reply]
[d/l]

        Down and dirty hacks are available of course. For everyday use I have come up with this:

        #!/usr/bin/perl
use locale;

my @list = ('maceira', 'mac alister', 'mac loughlin', 'san esteban', '
+sangregorio', 'san zoilo');

sub keeping_spaces {
  my $aa = $a;
  my $bb = $b;
  for ($aa) {
    tr/ /A/;
  }
  for ($bb) {
    tr/ /A/;
  }
  return $aa cmp $bb;
}

print "$_\n" for sort keeping_spaces @list;

        [download]

        Which outputs what we would expect:

        mac alister
mac loughlin
maceira
san esteban
san zoilo
sangregorio

        [download]
[reply]
[d/l]
[select]
        Why would you say that?
        Because I don't get the results you expect :) But then I don't have es_AR.UTF-8. Your results column for use-locale seems to ignores setlocale (because it doesn't match mine), but your no-locale column matches mine. I suspect a bug in locale. Can you try again with "es_AR.UTF-8" instead of "Spanish - Argentina"?
[reply]
[d/l]

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