Comments on: Sorting in MySQL - Ignoring the ‘The’ http://labs.dagensskiva.com/2007/12/28/sorting-in-mysql-ignoring-the-the/ A development blog Wed, 03 Dec 2008 00:27:22 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6.2 By: Johan Dahlin http://labs.dagensskiva.com/2007/12/28/sorting-in-mysql-ignoring-the-the/#comment-6 Johan Dahlin Mon, 31 Dec 2007 02:48:23 +0000 http://labs.dagensskiva.com/2007/12/28/sorting-in-mysql-ignoring-the-the/#comment-6 Relying on the hexadecimal value to do locale specific sorting is actually wrong. In the case of swedish, which is the most (only?) relevant language on dagensskiva.com you would like to sort a..zåäö. The hexadecimal value for å in utf-8 is 229, but ä is 228. Add to that that upper case letter have lower hex values than lower case letter. The proper way to solve this is to specify a character set, it appears to be possible to do this on a global, database and table basis: http://mirrors-r-us.net/doc/refman/5.0/en/character-sets.html Hope this helps! Relying on the hexadecimal value to do locale specific sorting is actually wrong. In the case of swedish, which is the most (only?) relevant language on dagensskiva.com you would like to sort a..zåäö.
The hexadecimal value for å in utf-8 is 229, but ä is 228. Add to that that upper case letter have lower hex values than lower case letter.

The proper way to solve this is to specify a character set, it appears to be possible to do this on a global, database and table basis:
http://mirrors-r-us.net/doc/refman/5.0/en/character-sets.html

Hope this helps!

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