Yes, collation is a strange thing, and? Collation order will depend on locale settings, and there are quite a few cases where the collation order of two items is not defined.
To add to the confusion, on OSX Mavericks, I see > x <- "\u0663" > y <- 3 > > x == y [1] FALSE > rank(c(x, y)) [1] 2 1 > x [1] "٣" > x == y [1] FALSE > x > y [1] TRUE > x < y [1] FALSE > Sys.getlocale() [1] "en_US.UTF-8/en_US.UTF-8/en_US.UTF-8/C/en_US.UTF-8/en_US.UTF-8" > Sys.getlocale("LC_COLLATE") [1] "en_US.UTF-8" Notice the differences from en_US.UTF8 (sans hyphen) on your system.... -pd On 13 Aug 2015, at 16:01 , John McKown <john.archie.mck...@gmail.com> wrote: > 2015-08-13 8:39 GMT-05:00 Hadley Wickham <h.wick...@gmail.com>: > >> x <- "\u0663" >> y <- 3 >> >> x == y >> # FALSE >> rank(c(x, y)) >> # c(1.5, 1.5) >> > > also interesting, and confusing to me: > >> x == y > [1] FALSE >> x > y > [1] FALSE >> x < y > [1] FALSE >> > > With some slight changes: > >> x <- "\u0663" >> y <- "3" >> xy <- c(x,y) >> rank(xy); > [1] 1.5 1.5 >> Sys.getlocale(); > [1] > "LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF8;LC_NUMERIC=C;LC_TIME=en_US.UTF8;LC_COLLATE=en_US.UTF8;LC_MONETARY=en_US.UTF8;LC_MESSAGES=en_US.UTF8;LC_PAPER=en_US.UTF8;LC_NAME=C;LC_ADDRESS=C;LC_TELEPHONE=C;LC_MEASUREMENT=en_US.UTF8;LC_IDENTIFICATION=C" >> Sys.setlocale(category="LC_COLLATE", locale="C"); > [1] "C" >> rank(xy); > [1] 2 1 >> > > > >> -- >> http://had.co.nz/ >> >> > -- > > Schrodinger's backup: The condition of any backup is unknown until a > restore is attempted. > > Yoda of Borg, we are. Futile, resistance is, yes. Assimilated, you will be. > > He's about as useful as a wax frying pan. > > 10 to the 12th power microphones = 1 Megaphone > > Maranatha! <>< > John McKown > > [[alternative HTML version deleted]] > > ______________________________________________ > R-devel@r-project.org mailing list > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel -- Peter Dalgaard, Professor, Center for Statistics, Copenhagen Business School Solbjerg Plads 3, 2000 Frederiksberg, Denmark Phone: (+45)38153501 Office: A 4.23 Email: pd....@cbs.dk Priv: pda...@gmail.com ______________________________________________ R-devel@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel