About Hebrew sort order
Note Access sorts right-to-left databases by using values from Unicode, not those from the right-to-left code page as in earlier versions. Opened or imported databases that use the Hebrew code page and Hebrew sort order will be converted to Unicode and General sort order.
Hebrew sort order is described here by using the Hebrew code page, not Unicode, because the former is more familiar to most users. The Hebrew sort order table arranges the characters of the Hebrew code page into a sort order. The sort order controls how data is sequentially ordered in Access databases that use the Hebrew code page.
The 256 characters of the Hebrew code page can be organized into several categories that determine how characters are sorted.
- Bidirectional
control characters (hexadecimal code points FD and FE):
Sort ignores these characters.
- Hebrew diacritics (hexadecimal code points C0 through CD, D1, and D2):
Sort ignores Hebrew diacritics except when the strings being compared are otherwise identical. In this case, unmarked characters (without diacritics) sort ahead of marked characters (with diacritics); diacritics with lower code point values sort ahead of others.
- General control characters (hexadecimal code points 00 through 1F and 7F), reserved characters (hexadecimal code points 80, 81, 8A, 8C through 90, 9A, 9C through 9F, CE through D0, D3 through DF, FB, FC, and FF), and punctuation:
These three categories sort ahead of alphanumeric characters in category order (that is, General control characters first) and in ascending code point order within each category (for example, 00 sorts ahead of 01).
- Hebrew and left-to-right alphanumeric characters (shown in the Hebrew sort order table that follows):
Left-to-right text is always sorted ahead of Hebrew text.
Left-to-right text sorting is not case sensitive. For example, although uppercase "A" is listed before lowercase "a" in the table on the following page, Access treats these characters equally and does not provide any sorting preference to either character.
Unmarked left-to-right text (without diacritics) is sorted before marked left-to-right text.
The following table lists the alphanumeric characters of the Hebrew code page along with their respective hexadecimal code points. Characters (Char) are arranged in columns according to their sort order, starting in the upper-left corner.
