NLSSORT

NLSSORT returns the string of bytes used to sort a text string. You can use this function to specify sorting and comparison operations based on a linguistic sort sequence rather than on the binary value of a string.

Note: NLSSORT returns a RAW value, which you may pass to another function. To create a measure or a calculated measure for the values returned by NLSSORT, use the RAWTOHEX function.

For more information about linguistic sorting, refer to the Oracle Database Globalization Support Guide.

Return Value

RAW

Syntax

NLSSORT(char [, 'nlsparam' ])

Arguments

char is a text expression.

nlsparam is a linguistic sort sequence in the form NLS_SORT =sort[_ai |_ci], where sort is an NLS language. You can add a suffix to the language to modify the sort: _ai for an accent-insensitive sort, or _ci for a case-insensitive sort.

Example

NLSSORT('Rumpelstiltskin') returns the value 52756D70656C7374696C74736B696E00 for a default linguistic sort, which in this case is American.