Sorting strangeness

[Mark Waddingham]

On 2019-09-18 15:43, Paul Dupuis via use-livecode wrote:
> Again, thank you Mark - this helped immensely.
> 
> In making a commercial text analytics application, we do a lot of
> sorting of user entered textual data. With the move from LC6.7.11 to
> LC9.0.5rc1 we discovered the sort text issue bug, but them we many
> dozens of sort statements through out our code, we wanted to be sure
> switching all text sorts to international was the right way to go. All
> are for user facing data. The alternative was to abstract them to a
> new function that used any of the work-arounds you identified for the
> sort text issue.

If you are updating to use sort international (which sounds like the 
correct
thing to do in this case) then I'd still recommend abstracting to a 
command
handler which does the sorting (which will have no measurable impact on
performance). e.g.

   command sortTextListForUserDisplay @xList, pDirection
     switch pDirection
     case "ascending"
       sort xList international ascending
       break
     case "descending"
       sort xList international descending
       break
     end switch
   end sortTextListForUserDisplay

The reason here is that it means it gives you more control in the 
future. Whilst
it didn't make it into 9.5, we have been working on more general 
'collation'
support which allows you to choose (with a high degree of flexibility) 
how sorting
occurs. So if you abstract now, then it makes it easier to change things 
in the
future should you want to.

Warmest Regards,

Mark.

P.S. Indeed you might find that not all your 'sort text' instances are 
suitable
for sort international when you go through - so abstracting those with a 
similarly
richly named handler might also help code documentation as much as 
anything else.

-- 
Mark Waddingham ~ mark at livecode.com ~ http://www.livecode.com/
LiveCode: Everyone can create apps