Sorter builder configuration

The sorter builder Budgegeria\IntlSort\Builder allows to adapt the sorting behaviour additional to local conventions. The effects may differ between the supported locales. You can read more about the different concepts on the ICU homepage.

Case First

Case First allows setting upper case or lower case letters to be first in the order of elements.

• lowerCaseFirst() - lower case letters come before upper case.
• upperCaseFirst() - upper case letters come before lower case.
• removeCaseFirst() - Remove the configured Case First and returns to the default behaviour for the given locale.

Numeric Collation

The Numeric Collation enables how numeric values should be ordered.

• enableNumericCollation() - “4” comes before “100”, because 4 is a lower number than 100.
• disableNumericCollation() - “100” comes before “4”, because of “alphabetical” reasons where 1 comes before 4.

Strength

Also known as Comparison Levels, a strength can influence the matching conditions between strings and how they are ordered. This can also be used for performance improvements you don’t need a stricter comparison.

• primaryStrength() - orders by the strongest difference (“a” < “b”) and sees weaker differences as the same (“A” = “a”, “ä” = “A”).
• secondaryStrength() - accents in the characters are considered secondary differences (“as” < “às” < “at”). A secondary difference is ignored when there is a primary difference anywhere in the strings.
• tertiaryStrength() - distinguishes upper and lower case differences in characters (“ao” < “Ao” < “aò”).
• quaternaryStrength() - when punctuation is ignored at level 1-3, an additional level can be used to distinguish words with and without punctuation (“ab” < “a-b” < “aB”)
• identicalStrength() - When all other levels are equal, the identical level is used as a tiebreaker. The Unicode code point values of the Normalization Form D of each string are compared at this level, just in case there is no difference at levels 1-4 .

Read more at the ICU homepage

Case Level

The Case Level is used when ignoring accents but not case. In such a situation, use e.g. strength primaryStrength() and enableCaseLevel(). It can also affect performance.

• enableCaseLevel() - enables the Case Level.
• disableCaseLevel() - disables the Case Level.

Normalization Mode

The Normalization setting determines whether text is thoroughly normalized or not in comparison.

• enableNormalizationMode() - enables the Normalization Mode.
• disableNormalizationMode() - disables the Normalization Mode.

French Collation

Some French dictionary ordering traditions sort strings with different accents from the back of the string. This attribute is automatically enabled for the Canadian French locale (fr_CA). Enabling it increases the string comparison performance cost, but not sort key length.

• enableFrenchCollation() - enables the French collation (e.g “cote” < “côte” < “coté” < “côté”).
• disableFrenchCollation() - disables the French collation. (e.g “cote” < “coté” < “côte” < “côté”).

Alternate Handling

The Alternate attribute is used to control the handling of the so called variable characters in the UCA: whitespace, punctuation and symbols.

• nonIgnorableAlternateHandling() - differences among variable characters are of the same importance as differences among letters.
• shiftedAlternateHandling() - variable characters are of only minor importance. Usually used in combination with quaternaryStrength().

Order By

Configures the sort order and which part of the elements are the focus for the sorting.

• orderByAsc() - use ascending order direction.
• orderByDesc() - use descending order direction.
• orderByKeys() - order by keys of the elements.
• orderByValues() - order by the values of the elements

Omit array keys

• omitKeys() - array keys of the sorted value won’t be kept and replaced with the keys of a list.
• keepKeys() - keep original array keys after sort.

Null value position

Positioning of null values at the start or at the end of all elements.

• nullFirst() - set null values at the beginning.
• nullLast() - set null values at the end.
• removeNullPosition() - removes the null value sort config.

getSorter()

Returns a Sorter instance with the given configuration. Every call creates a new instance.

getComparator()

Returns a Comparator instance with the given configuration. Every call creates a new instance.

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