note larryk The key in the index is unique the Unicode standard is supposed to define the order. I was rather hoping I could depend on that, since it is supposed to be a standard. <p> Looks like my options are: <ul> <li>I could use the ordinal value of the characters and do a numeric sort instead of a textual sort. That's what I was suggesting in point 2 above. <li>The only other option is to ditch my Perl index creation and rewrite it in C# so that the index creation and the index usage are both using exactly the same sorting library. Not sure I want to go there yet, though. </ul> Any other options? <!-- Node text goes above. Div tags should contain sig only --> <div class="pmsig"><div class="pmsig-66604"> <pre><font color=#b0c4de size=2><a href="/index.pl?node=larryk"> larryk </a> perl -le "s,,reverse killer,e,y,rifle,lycra,,print" </font></pre> </div></div> 1016504 1016545