/sys$common/syshlp/helplib.hlb SORT, /COLLATING_SEQUENCE, Parameters  *Conan The Librarian (sorry for the slow response - running on an old VAX)

 type

    o  ASCII

       Arranges characters according to ASCII sequence. ASCII is the
       default sequence and need not be specified.

    o  EBCDIC

       Arranges characters according to EBCDIC sequence. The
       characters remain in ASCII representation; only the order
       is changed.

    o  Multinational

       Arranges characters according to Multinational sequence, which
       collates the international character set. When you use the
       Multinational sequence, characters are ordered according to
       the following rules:

       -  All diacritical (accented) forms of a character are given
          the collating value of the character (A', A", A` collate as
          A).

       -  Lowercase characters are given the collating value of their
          uppercase equivalents (a collates as A, a" collates as A").

       -  If two strings compare as equal, tie-breaking is performed.
          The strings are compared to detect differences due to
          diacritical marks, ignored characters, or characters that
          collate as equal although they are actually different. If
          the strings still compare as equal, another comparison is
          done based on the numeric codes of the characters. In this
          final comparison, lowercase characters are ordered before
          uppercase.

       Care should be taken when sorting or merging files for further
       processing using the Multinational sequence. Sequence checking
       procedures in most programming languages compare numeric
       characters. Because Multinational is based on actual graphic
       characters and not on the codes representing those characters,
       normal sequence checking does not work.

 cs-name

    Arranges character keys according to the named sequence, which
    must be a collating sequence defined in an NCS library.

    High-performance Sort/Merge: The high-performance Sort/Merge
    utility currently supports only the ASCII, EBCDIC, and
    Multinational collating sequences.