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From: UEPRCK@UNC.BITNET (Bob Kleckner)
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.sas-l
Subject: Internal collating sequences and character comparisons.
Message-ID: <SAS-L%90020110153414@VTVM2.BITNET>
Date: 1 Feb 90 15:15:00 GMT
Sender: "SAS(r) Discussion" <SAS-L@OHSTVMA>
Reply-To: Bob Kleckner <UEPRCK@UNC>
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  This is an expansion on Sally Muller's 01/30/90 comments on PROC SORT
and differences between EBCDIC (IBM) and ASCII (everybody else ?)
internal collating sequences for 'character variable' comparisons.
For those unable to RFTM (p. 1040, V.5 Basics) the smallest  to largest
comparison sequence for
    EBCDIC is    a to z  <  A to Z  <  0 to 9    and for
    ASCII  is    0 to 9  <  A to Z  <  a to z    .
As pointed out by Sally, this difference will affect the sort order of
character value BY variables in PROC SORT.
  This difference will also affect character comparisons (p. 224, V.5
Basics) as follows:
    In EBCDIC
               NAME= 'a';
               If NAME < '1';  /* Is true */
    In ASCII
               NAME= 'a';
               If NAME < '1';  /* Is false */ .
  Warning:  Keep this difference in mind if you are moving between
            operating systems.
         :  This may be especially important for those testing SAS
            programs on a PC and then doing production runs on an
            IBM MVS or CMS machine.
  Because someone will ask:  Your IBM PC and PS2 machines use the
                             ASCII internal collating sequence.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Bob Kleckner  (UEPRCK@UNC.BITNET)
Applications Analyst Programmer
Dept. of Epidemiology, UNC
Chapel Hill, NC 27599-7400
919-966-2080