Re: sort-lines including non ASCII

[Michael Heerdegen <michael_heerdegen@web.de>]

Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:

> Maybe if we figure out how to allow this in interactive usage, we can
> pass that bit down?  And if worse comes to worst, perhaps a separate
> command is in order, which uses collation by default?

Since `sort-lines' calls `sort-subr' with a fixed second and third
argument, I guess we can assume that the key type the predicate must
accept is always the same: (#1=(beg . end) . #1#).  It would be nice if
`sort-lines' as a function would at least accept an arbitrary predicate,
and we transform it to accept the correct key type and pass it to
`sort-subr', so that `string-collate-lessp' would work as PREDICATE
argument.

BTW, a relevant question is: Is `compare-buffer-substring' faster than
`buffer-substring'+`string<'?

I've no strong opinion about the command usage.  I would even find it
acceptable to leave it as is and force the user to call the thing as a
function with M-:, since a lambda as predicate might also be useful
quite often.

Michael.