Using postgresql I've noticed strange ordering issues. While investigating further, I've found a very informative post. I've inspected further and it is true that LC_LOCALE files are the same for sl_SI.UTF-8, de_DE.UTF-8 and en_US.UTF-8 locales (and probably all others as well!).
A simple test-case on OSX: create a file named de with contents:
u
ü
ö
a
b
c
f
g
x
and from the Terminal, run LANG="de_DE.UTF-8" LC_ALL="de_DE.UTF-8" sort de. The output is:
a
b
c
f
g
u
x
ö
ü
where expected output (for instance, if I run this on Ubuntu linux) is:
a
b
c
f
g
ö
u
ü
x
My system has local files for those languages and I see differences between en_US.UTF-8 and de_DE.UTF-8, just not in LC_COLLATE. Is there some reason OS X does not use LC_COLLATE settings? A related question: Case-insensitive ls sorting in Mac OSX
