UNB/ CS/ David Bremner/ teaching/ cs2613/ books/ mdn/ Reference/ Global Objects/ Intl/ Intl.Collator

The Intl.Collator object enables language-sensitive string comparison.

Constructor

Static methods

Instance properties

These properties are defined on Intl.Collator.prototype and shared by all Intl.Collator instances.

Instance methods

Examples

Using Collator

The following example demonstrates the different potential results for a string occurring before, after, or at the same level as another:

console.log(new Intl.Collator().compare("a", "c")); // -1, or some other negative value
console.log(new Intl.Collator().compare("c", "a")); // 1, or some other positive value
console.log(new Intl.Collator().compare("a", "a")); // 0

Note that the results shown in the code above can vary between browsers and browser versions. This is because the values are implementation-specific. That is, the specification requires only that the before and after values are negative and positive.

Using locales

The results provided by Intl.Collator.prototype.compare() vary between languages. In order to get the sort order of the language used in the user interface of your application, make sure to specify that language (and possibly some fallback languages) using the locales argument:

// in German, ä sorts with a
console.log(new Intl.Collator("de").compare("ä", "z"));
// -1, or some other negative value

// in Swedish, ä sorts after z
console.log(new Intl.Collator("sv").compare("ä", "z"));
// 1, or some other positive value

Using options

The results provided by Intl.Collator.prototype.compare() can be customized using the options argument:

// in German, ä has a as the base letter
console.log(new Intl.Collator("de", { sensitivity: "base" }).compare("ä", "a"));
// 0

// in Swedish, ä and a are separate base letters
console.log(new Intl.Collator("sv", { sensitivity: "base" }).compare("ä", "a"));
// 1, or some other positive value

Specifications

Browser compatibility

See also