RE: Hexadecimal digits?

[Jill Ramonsky]

Sorry, but I have to correct you. You state below that "[my] argument doesn't work". This is slightly confusing because I haven't proposed any arguments, beyond that I support the inclusion into Unicode of hex digits which are distinct from the letters A to Z.

I can only assume you are suggesting that the "natural sort" algorithm works in decimal but not in hex. If so, I should mention that (1) it wasn't me who invented the natural sort algorithm, so I can't take credit for that in any radix, and (2) there is absolutely no reason why it wouldn't work in radix sixteen just as it would in radix ten. For example 77 and 100 get sorted in the order (77, 100), not (100, 77) in EVERY radix in which the digits 0, 1 and 7 exist. This is true in base eight. It is true in base ten. It is true in base sixteen. It is even true in base 68431. In fact, the only things the natural sort algorithim need to know are (a) which characters represent digits and which ones don't, and (b) what is the numerical value of each such digit.

To clarify this, if we applied the natural sort algorithm to the filenames thus far mentioned, using a natural sort algorithm which recognised the codepoints U+218A to U+218F as having the digit property with values ten to fifteen respectively, then they would sort as follows. (The algorithm wouldn't specifically need to know that the digits were "hex", only that they were numeric).

(1) U+46, U+69, U+6C, u+65, U+39, U+39 ("File99")
(2) U+46, U+69, U+6C, u+65, U+39, U+39, U+41 ("File99A") -- note that this A is a letter
(3) U+46, U+69, U+6C, u+65, U+39, U+39, U+46 ("File99A") -- note that this F is a letter
(4) U+46, U+69, U+6C, u+65, U+31, U+30, U+30 ("File100")
(5) U+46, U+69, U+6C, u+65, U+39, U+39, U+32 ("File992")
(6) U+46, U+69, U+6C, u+65, U+39, U+39, U+218A ("File99A") -- note that this A is not a letter, but the digit ten
(7) U+46, U+69, U+6C, u+65, U+39, U+39, U+218F ("File99F") -- note that this F is not a letter, but the digit fifteen

If you are suggesting that the natural sort algorithm won't work without separate codepoints for hex digits then you are of course correct, but that is an argument in favor of hex-digit-characters, not against them.

Jill



> -----Original Message-----
> From: Kent Karlsson [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
> Sent: Monday, November 10, 2003 2:42 PM
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: RE: Hexadecimal digits?
>
>
> > After all, 99A (in hexadecimal) is greater than 99 (hexadecimal).
>
> Oops. I missed the "2" key. E.g:
>
> > After all, 99A (in hexadecimal) is greater than 992 (hexadecimal).
>
>     Sorry (both about missing the "2" and that your argument doesn't
> work)
>     /kent k
>