R help - Nov 2008 - Question about Sort

Hi,

I am wondering if there is an option to control how R sort characters  
on different machines.

For example, on my Mac OS X

 > sort(c("H", "a"), decreasing = TRUE)
[1] "a" "H"

The same command on a Linux machine gives me
 > sort(c("H", "a"), decreasing = TRUE)
[1] "H" "a"

I don't know if there is an option to control the behavior of
'sort'.

Thanks,
Wen

On Tue, 11 Nov 2008, Wen Huang wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I am wondering if there is an option to control how R sort characters on 
> different machines.
Yes, and it is described on the help page for sort:

      The sort order for character vectors will depend on the collating
      sequence of the locale in use: see 'Comparison'. The sort order
      for factors is the order of their levels (which is particularly
      appropriate for ordered factors).

and do study the cross-reference and its references.

Sorting on Mac OS X in UTF-8 locales seems broken (that is, the standard C 
functions compare in Unicode point order irrespective of language): we are 
working on a solution (the use of ICU. which can be compiled into R >= 
2.8.0).
>
> For example, on my Mac OS X
>
>> sort(c("H", "a"), decreasing = TRUE)
> [1] "a" "H"
>
> The same command on a Linux machine gives me
>> sort(c("H", "a"), decreasing = TRUE)
> [1] "H" "a"
>
> I don't know if there is an option to control the behavior of
'sort'.
Well, the posting guide did ask you to do your homework, including reading 
the help pages.
> Thanks,
> Wen

-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
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