difference in sort order linux/Windows (R.2.11.0)

It would seem that there is indeed a locale effect. Revisiting the
examples I used on Linux in a previous post, at which time I was
using the default "LC_COLLATE=en_GB.UTF-8", I changed this to "C".
Both the "C" and the "en_GB.UTF-8" are indicated (the latter copied
from my previous post):

  Sys.setlocale("LC_COLLATE", "C")
  # [1] "C"
  sort(c("AB CD","ABCD"))
  # [1] "AB CD" "ABCD"       ## (C)
  # [1] "ABCD"  "AB CD"      ## (en_GB.UTF-8)
  sort(c("AB CD","ABCD "))
  # [1] "AB CD" "ABCD "      ## (C)
  # [1] "AB CD" "ABCD "      ## (en_GB.UTF-8)

So the "C" ordering comes out as one would expect in either case,
while the "en_GB.UTF-8" ordering does not in the first case (where
the two strings are of different lengths).

Is there any way to extract the numerical encoding of a character
string (according to the collating locale encoding) to which the
comparison in the sort() algorithm is applied?

Ted.

Pretty obvious: You use different locales (collate). What happens if
you use
the same on both machines?

Cheers
Joris

On Fri, May 28, 2010 at 10:17 AM, carslaw <david.carslaw at kcl.ac.uk>
wrote:

Dear R users,

I'm a bit perplexed with the effect sort has here, as it is different
on
...
 the linux order is perhaps more intuitive.  However, the problem is
 the
order is inconsistent between
 the two systems.  Any suggestions?

sessionInfo()
R version 2.11.0 (2010-04-22)
x86_64-pc-linux-gnu

locale:
 [1] LC_CTYPE=en_GB.utf8          LC_NUMERIC=C
 [3] LC_TIME=en_GB.utf8           LC_COLLATE=en_GB.utf8
 [5] LC_MONETARY=en_GB.utf8       LC_MESSAGES=en_GB.utf8
 [7] LC_PAPER=en_GB.utf8          LC_NAME=en_GB.utf8
 [9] LC_ADDRESS=en_GB.utf8        LC_TELEPHONE=en_GB.utf8
[11] LC_MEASUREMENT=en_GB.utf8    LC_IDENTIFICATION=en_GB.utf8
...

sessionInfo()

R version 2.11.0 (2010-04-22)
x86_64-pc-mingw32

locale:
[1] LC_COLLATE=English_United Kingdom.1252
[2] LC_CTYPE=English_United Kingdom.1252
[3] LC_MONETARY=English_United Kingdom.1252
[4] LC_NUMERIC=C
[5] LC_TIME=English_United Kingdom.1252
...
Dr David Carslaw

-- 
Joris Meys

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Date: 28-May-10                                       Time: 12:49:19
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