Frequently asked question

Why are case-sensitive table sort results different in ArcGIS 10?

Last Published: April 25, 2020

Answer

In previous releases of ArcGIS, case-insensitive table sorts were performed in lexicographic order (also known as alphabetical order) while case-sensitive sorts were performed in binary order.

Binary and lexicographic order are the same in English, but according to this MSDN article, “in certain European code pages, for example, the character 'a' (value 0x61) precedes the character '�' (value 0xE4) in the character set, but the character '�' precedes the character 'a' lexicographically.”

At ArcGIS 10, table sorts sort lexicographically, which means that in some languages, the order of results changes when doing case-sensitive sorts.

Article ID:000011131

Software:
  • ArcMap

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