Table of strings sorting problem

[John C]

Aarti wrote:
> Hello all D-Fans!
> 
> I encountered a problem with string sorting according to Polish language 
> rules. Here is a simple test program:
> 
> // ----------------------------------
> import std.stdio;
> void main() {
>     char[][] table;
>     table.length=15;
>     
>     table[0]="ą";
>     table[1]="a";
>     table[2]="ć";
>     table[3]="c";
>     table[4]="ę";
>     table[5]="e";
>     table[6]="ń";
>     table[7]="n";
>     table[6]="ł";
>     table[7]="l";
>     table[8]="ó";
>     table[9]="o";
>     table[10]="ś";
>     table[11]="s";
>     table[12]="ź";
>     table[13]="ż";
>     table[14]="z";
> 
>     table.sort;
> 
>     foreach(char[] s; table) {
>         writef(s);
>     }
>     writefln();
> }
> // ----------------------------------
> 
> Output of this test is:
> aceloszóąćęłśźż
> 
> when it should be:
> aącćeęlłoósśzźż
> 
> It looks like sort doesn't sort properly according to language rules.
> 
> Is it a known issue? How to sort strings in D according to language rules?
> 
> PS. Possibility of using Polish characters in class identifiers is for 
> me really cool. In C++ books in examples you can see all the time 
> Trojkat instead of Trójkąt (triangle) and it looks awful.
> 
> Regards
> Marcin Kuszczak

As others have implied, D's standard library isn't culturally aware.

I've been working on a locale package for Mango that will eventually 
allow correct string sorting for specific languages. This is how you'd 
sort a list of Polish characters:

const char[][] table = [ "a","ą","c","ć","e","ę" ];
Culture.current = Culture.getCulture("pl-PL");
table.sort();