SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR SORTING CHARACTER STRINGS CONTAINING ACCENTED AND UNACCENTED CHARACTERS

A system and method for sorting accented character strings involves creating an expanded character string containing the characters in their base form (without accents) and corresponding ordinal values indicating whether the base characters are accented or unaccented. The ordinal values are assigned in a manner that differentiates accented from unaccented characters as well as one type of accented character from another. The expanded character strings are then sorted, first according to their base characters and then according to their ordinal values.