I18N/COLLATE(1)

NAME
Collate - compare 8-bit scalar data according to the current locale

SYNOPSIS

    use Collate;
    setlocale(LC_COLLATE, 'locale-of-your-choice');
    $s1 = new Collate "scalar_data_1";
    $s2 = new Collate "scalar_data_2";

DESCRIPTION
This module provides you with objects that will collate according to your national character set, providing the POSIX setlocale() function should be supported on your system.

You can compare $s1 and $s2 above with

    $s1 le $s2
to extract the data itself, you'll need a dereference: $$s1

This uses POSIX::setlocale. The basic collation conversion is done by strxfrm() which terminates at NUL characters being a decent C routine. collate_xfrm() handles embedded NUL characters gracefully. Due to cmp and overload magic, lt, le, eq, ge, and gt work also. The available locales depend on your operating system; try whether locale -a shows them or man pages for "locale" or "nlsinfo" or the direct approach ls /usr/lib/nls/loc or ls /usr/lib/nls. Not all the locales that your vendor supports are necessarily installed: please consult your operating system's documentation.

The locale names are probably something like "xx_XX.(ISO)?8859-N" or "xx_XX.(ISO)?8859N", for example "fr_CH.ISO8859-1" is the Swiss (CH) variant of French (fr), ISO Latin (8859) 1 (-1) which is the Western European character set.