COLLATE - collating orders for the BSORT command.
Collating Orders:
+AscII +BINary
+BinaryFloating +BinarySigned
+Caseless +DATe
+DECimal +DICtionary
+FloatingPoint +FloatingPoint4bit
+FloatingPoint9bit +HEXadecimal
+LeadingSigned4bit +LeadingSigned9bit
+Location +NotSigned4bit
+NotSigned9bit +Numeric
+OCTal +ONLy
+TrailingSigned4bit +TrailingSigned9bit
+Width
- +AscII
- indicates that the key should be sorted according to the
ASCII collating sequence. This is the default. In fact,
+AscII treats the input as if it consists of unsigned
binary integers. If the input is in BCD and +Raw is in
effect, +AscII will sort the BCD input in standard BCD
collating order. Remember that if you do sort BCD data
this way, you may need to express the length of the sort
key in 6 bit BCD characters characters rather than the
default 9 bit bytes.
- +Caseless
- indicates that the case of letters in the key should be
ignored. Thus all the keys beginning with "A"
or "a" will be grouped together, all those with
"B" or "b", and so on. This option
may only be used with ASCII input. If two keys compare
equal, they are compared again as raw text (so that
"A" will come before "a").
Non-alphabetic data is sorted according to the ASCII
collating order. Alphabetic data is inserted in this
order where the lower case alphabetics would normally
appear.
- +DICtionary
- causes the sort to ignore everything that isn't a letter
or a digit. The case of letters is ignored in the
comparison. Keys that compare equal according to this
test will be compared again as raw text. This option may
only be used with ASCII input.
- +Numeric
- indicates that the key contains a (possibly signed)
number made up of ASCII characters. The number will be
collected from the start of the key until a non-numeric
character is found. If the number begins with a zero, it
will taken to be octal; otherwise, it is taken as
decimal.
- +OCTal
- indicates that the key contains a (possibly signed) octal
number in ASCII characters. The number will be collected
from the start of the key until a non-numeric character
is found. The number does not need a leading zero, but it
can only consist of the digits 0 to 7.
- +DECimal
- indicates that the key contains a (possibly signed)
decimal number in ASCII characters. The number will be
collected from the start of the key until a non-numeric
character is found. The number will be taken as decimal
regardless of leading zeroes.
- +HEXadecimal
- indicates that the key contains a hexadecimal number in
ASCII characters. The number will be collected from the
start of the key until BSORT finds a character which is
neither numeric nor one of the letters from "a"
to "f" (either upper or lower case).
- +BINary
- indicates that the key contains a (possibly signed)
binary number in ASCII characters. The number will be
collected from the start of the key until a non-numeric
character is found. The number can only consists of ones
and zeroes.
- +FloatingPoint
- indicates that the key contains a floating point number
in ASCII characters. This may have a leading sign, a
decimal point, and/or an exponent introduced with
"E" or "e" (single precision), or
"D" or "d" (double precision). The
number will be collected from the start of the key until
BSORT finds a character that cannot be part of a floating
point number.
- +DATe
- indicates that the key contains a date. The date may be
in any form recognized by the B library function GETDATE
(see "expl b lib
getdate"). This collating order dictates that
records be sorted in chronological order.
- +BinarySigned
- indicates that the key contains a signed integer in
normal binary representation (i.e. as a machine integer).
This kind of key may be a maximum of 72 bits long
(specification of key length is dealt with later).
- +BinaryFloating
- indicates that the key contains a floating point number
in normal machine representation. This kind of key may be
a maximum of 72 bits long. After the key has been
obtained from each record, it will be padded out to 72
bits by adding zero bits on the end of the number; this
makes it possible to sort such keys using standard
double-precision floating point comparisons.
- EIS Numeric Comparisons'
- may be used in the sort by specifying one of the
following key options.
+FloatingPoint4bit
+FloatingPoint9bit
+LeadingSigned4bit
+LeadingSigned9bit
+NotSigned4bit
+NotSigned9bit
+TrailingSigned4bit
+TrailingSigned9bit
The length of keys sorted using EIS comparisons must
work out to less than 64 EIS digits.
- +Location
- sorts according to the location of a field in the record.
This option is applicable when using BSORT's facilities
for scanning a record and parsing it into fields. The
sort is based on the position of a particular field
within the record.
- +Width
- sorts according to the width of a particular field in the
record. The wider the field, the later it comes in the
collating sequence. For example, if you were to sort a
dictionary according to width, you would obtain all the
one-letter words, then the two-letter words, and so on.
See Also:
- expl bsort
- full description of BSORT
- expl bsort batch
- using BSORT in batch
- expl bsort errors
- error handling
- expl bsort examples
- examples of BSORT operations
- expl bsort keyopt
- key options
- expl bsort notes
- miscellaneous notes
- expl bsort options
- general command line options
- expl bsort position
- key position descriptors
Copyright © 1996, Thinkage Ltd.