System Management Guide: Operating System and Devices

Creating a New Collation Order

Procedure

1. If you are using a locale source file named gwm, copy the provided locale source file that is closest to the desired character collation order to a file named gwm.src. This name cannot be the same as any previously defined locale. The system-defined locales are listed in Understanding Locale.

   cd /usr/lib/nls/loc
    
   cp en_GB.ISO8859-1.src gwm.src
   

2. Edit the newly created gwm.src file to change the lines that are associated within the LC_COLLATE category that is associated with the characters you want to change, by typing:

   vi gwm.src
      change
         <a>   <a>;<non-accent>;<lower-case>;IGNORE
         <b>   <b>;<non-accent>;<lower-case>;IGNORE
         <c>   <c>;<non-accent>;<lower-case>;IGNORE
         <d>   <d>;<non-accent>;<lower-case>;IGNORE
      to
         <a>   <d>;<non-accent>;<lower-case>;IGNORE
         <b>   <c>;<non-accent>;<lower-case>;IGNORE
         <c>   <b>;<non-accent>;<lower-case>;IGNORE
         <d>   <a>;<non-accent>;<lower-case>;IGNORE 
   

3. Generate the new gwm file locale, by typing:

   localedef -f ISO08859-1 -i gwm.src gwm
   

4. Set the LOCPATH environment variable to the directory containing the new locale. If the new locale is in /u/foo, then type:

   LOCPATH=/u/foo:/usr/lib/nls/loc; export LOCPATH
   

   The default for LOCPATH is /usr/lib/nls/loc.

   Note: All setuid and setgid programs ignore the LOCPATH environment variable.

5. Change the LC_COLLATE environment variable to the name of the newly defined gwm locale binary, by typing:

   LC_COLLATE=gwm; export LC_COLLATE
   

   Any command now uses the collation order specified in the gwm locale. In the example in step 2, the characters a-d are sorted in reverse order by commands such as ls and sort.