sort problem in XY3 !!! SOLVED !!!

["Pierre d'Or jcvanhaeften@xxxxxxxx" jcvanhaeften@xxxxxxxx]

Thanks to Carl Distefano, he did read well my English: numbers
are sorted in reverse order, while words (in my file they where
all lowercase) are sorted in normal alphabetical order.

Carl, I followed your suggestions and it worked fine;
all you wrote is correct; thanks again.
Yes, it is strange there's nothing to see at line 6 in the
file-column (Cntrl-M), guess the standard sort-file isn't really
a file but is embedded in the sort-overlay

As you wrote:
      "The reverse of the reverse equals the desired sort
      order. For some reason, this circuitous method
      succeeds where the
      more obvious approach -- manipulating the sort file
      directly fails (as you found). "


Since my help-file has no information at all about SK, it didn't
even exist, I did some sorting experiments.
So, after starting Xy an sk=2 will give you a reverse sort (of
the standard sort-file)
but XY also accepts sk=3 and 4, 5 and so on
I tried an Va SK and surprisingly that worked, returning 3
values: 2,80,0
where 2 = the Sk-value
80 = length of sort-key (maybe shortening that it will speedup
your sort?)
0 = offset for start of the sort-key

At last I also found that leaving out the Capital letters in
Carl's file did give also a good result, so there's no need to
specify booth capital and lower-case.

But the greatest surprize was that my sort-key file does work
too, if ........ i use sk=3
so you can specify directly the wanted order in your sort-key
file.

Now knowing that chainging the offset is posible I tried that out
because one of the files I am sorting has columns, created by TS
15,30,45,60 ......etc.
Found out that sorting on the second column isn't possible by
specifying Sk=2,15,30
because the offset counts from the beginning of each line as if
the file was in expanded mode and didn't count the TS-values (and
the data-items in the first column where various in length)


==============
==============
The following has /partially/nothing/less to do with the
sort-problem
but it is there to correct some misunderstandings

I assumed (wrongly) that Ctrl-M (which is not English expression
nor an
American/English) is well-known to each XY-user, but like
Francisco Barrau said (and Carl Distefano understood too) it is
displaying Memory Usage (Ctrl-M is standard in XY as is was
shipped, at least in my XY);
I had no need to change my KBD-file and overwrite the
Ctrl-M for an other purpose, but if you did so, you voluntary got
rid off the originally Ctrl-M and you did have to park the
Cntrl-M under an other key(stroke) or you lost it

I was "Not-Amused " by some responses; nevertheless be sure I
tried to address all of you in my best English.

Thanks Patricia for explaining the reason for "ham-handed", your
mail "cleared
the air". But I don't understand what the "Belgians"
      [nowadays our south- neighbours
       ,they where a part of the Netherlands until they
separated,
      after a 10-day war in 1831 - the French helped them]
have to do with it.
      [we have a lot a Belgian jokes and so the Belgians
have them visa-versa]
Please explain (off-line? since that's not an XY issue)

===who's who
1. my Christian name = Carel
1a. Charles in English
1b. guess it will be the same in American/English

2. I was born and lived ever since in Holland (The Netherlands)
2a. my native language = Dutch

3. Pierre d'Or (that's French) = the name of our French house in
Burgundy
3a. that's not Golden Pierre or Golden Peter but means Golden
Stone
3b. we live here for the moment, for a holiday
3c. that's why it is mentioned in my email-address


TANKS for those who did give solutions ("working or not'; the
effort to help is the motor for a list likes this: one should be
driven by that idea).

and no (too) hard feelings too whom who may regard these
sentences above

Carel