MarkLogic排序规则定制求助：实现A优先于An的排序

Problem Overview #

You've nailed most of your sorting requirements with the collation http://marklogic.com/collation/en/S1/AS/T00BB: it handles case insensitivity, ignores symbols/punctuation/non-Latin special chars, and skips leading whitespace. But you're stuck on the 5th rule: getting entries like "A Treatise" to sit ahead of "An Asian". Right now, your sort order puts "An Asian" first, which doesn't match what you need.

Root Cause #

Your current collation compares sequences character-by-character after applying its ignore rules. Since n (from "An") comes before t (from "A Treatise", with spaces ignored), "An Asian" gets sorted earlier. To fix this, we need to tweak the collation to give single-article "A" entries priority over "An" entries.

Solution: Custom Tailored Collation #

MarkLogic lets you extend existing collations with custom ICU-based tailoring rules to adjust sort priorities for specific character sequences. Here's a collation that checks all your boxes, including the 5th requirement:

http://marklogic.com/collation/en/S1/AS/T00BB;tailoring=&A ; [*] << An

What the Tailoring Rule Does

• &A anchors the rule to the starting character "A"
• ; [*] refers to any character that follows "A"
• << An tells the collation that any sequence starting with "A" + any character should sort before the sequence "An"

This ensures that entries starting with "A " (even when spaces are ignored) will always come before entries starting with "An ", no matter what characters follow.

Expected Sort Result #

With this custom collation, your entries will sort exactly as you want:

• Æ and Words
• ;a next
• A Treatise
• An Asian
• Beautiful sky
• -Ology and -Osophy
• Public Access
• Sentencing Frame
• 'Soda' Vs 'Pop'
• The Results
• ÜBer

Backup Plan (If Custom Collation Isn't an Option) #

If you can't use a tailored collation for some reason, you could preprocess your indexed field to adjust the sort key:

• Replace leading "An " with a placeholder character that sorts later (like ~An )
• This way, "A Treatise" (with an unmodified key) will naturally sort before the modified "~An Asian" key

That said, the custom collation approach is cleaner and aligns with your preference of handling sorting via collation rules directly.

内容的提问来源于stack exchange，提问作者Bin