I expect that an accent insensitive compare treats accented characters as the "same" as their un-accented counterparts because the accent does not change the character itself but things like pronounciation or stress.
So in Frech, à is similar to a, é is similar to è and you use an accent insensitive compare to find Gérard even though your search term says Gerard (without the accent). However, in the German language, the letters Ö and O are two different characters with a completely different pronounciation (the same is true for A/Ä and U/Ü). As they look similar, the sorting is done so that they stay together, but they can _not_ be treated as accented versions of each other. When I use the UNICODE_CI_AI collation to compare them, Firebird treats them as the same: select case when 'a' = 'ä' collate unicode_ci_ai then 'equal' else 'not equal' end || ' expected: not equal' from rdb$database union all select case when 'O' = 'Ö' collate unicode_ci_ai then 'equal' else 'not equal' end || ' expected: not equal' from rdb$database union all select case when 'Ä' = 'ä' collate unicode_ci then 'equal' else 'not equal' end || ' expected: equal' from rdb$database union all select case when 'a' = 'à' collate unicode_ci_ai then 'equal' else 'not equal' end || ' expected: equal' from rdb$database union all select case when 'c' = 'ç' collate unicode_ci_ai then 'equal' else 'not equal' end || ' expected: equal' from rdb$database union all select case when 'é' = 'è' collate unicode_ci_ai then 'equal' else 'not equal' end || ' expected: equal' from rdb$database delivers: equal expected: not equal equal expected: not equal equal expected: equal equal expected: equal equal expected: equal equal expected: equal Is there something that can be done to improve this? Regards Stefan -- Stefan Heymann, Tübingen, Germany ------------------------------------ ------------------------------------ ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Visit http://www.firebirdsql.org and click the Documentation item on the main (top) menu. Try FAQ and other links from the left-side menu there. Also search the knowledgebases at http://www.ibphoenix.com/resources/documents/ ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ ------------------------------------ Yahoo Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/firebird-support/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/firebird-support/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: [email protected] [email protected] <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [email protected] <*> Your use of Yahoo Groups is subject to: https://info.yahoo.com/legal/us/yahoo/utos/terms/
