# Alphabetic sorting strategies **URL:** \ **Category:** Elasticsearch\ **Created:** [November 22, 2013, 7:46pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/alphabetic-sorting-strategies/14554 "2013-11-22T19:46:53Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Matthew\_Painter](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/matthew_painter/32/1251_2.png) [@Matthew\_Painter](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Matthew_Painter)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2013, 7:46pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/alphabetic-sorting-strategies/14554/1 "2013-11-22T19:46:53Z")
Hi all, We have a field that we would like to (approximately) sort on that is unique and unicode - and potentially long. In order to decrease the amount of memory required by elasticsearch, we have been thinking about strategies such as: - using a multi field and only indexing the first n characters - mapping the strings to a float Does anyone have any good suggestions for how to manage this kind of use case better? Thanks 🙂 Matt -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "elasticsearch" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [elasticsearch+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com](mailto:elasticsearch+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com). For more options, visit [https://groups.google.com/groups/opt\_out](https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out). ---
**Author:** ![jprante](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/jprante/32/44941_2.png) [@jprante](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/jprante)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2013, 9:15pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/alphabetic-sorting-strategies/14554/2 "2013-11-22T21:15:35Z")
Use ICU collation of the ICU plugin for sorting. With the "strength" level, sort key length may be affected. Sorting depends on locale, so I do not recommend only indexing first n characters. > **[elastic/elasticsearch-analysis-icu](https://github.com/elastic/elasticsearch-analysis-icu)** > > elasticsearch-analysis-icu - ICU Analysis plugin for Elasticsearch Jörg -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "elasticsearch" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [elasticsearch+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com](mailto:elasticsearch+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com). For more options, visit [https://groups.google.com/groups/opt\_out](https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out). ---
**Author:** ![Matthew\_Painter](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/matthew_painter/32/1251_2.png) [@Matthew\_Painter](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Matthew_Painter)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2013, 10:51pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/alphabetic-sorting-strategies/14554/3 "2013-11-22T22:51:46Z")
Indeed I see that the more loose you are with comparison, the shorter a collation key can be. I can't see what issues taking the first n characters would cause, assuming the accents are combined with letters in the normalized Unicode form? Of course what would perhaps be a better alternative is only taking the first n bytes of the collation key. This should give an approximate ordering with a known precision. Doing this, ignoring punctuation in the collator, looks best to me to get a good-enough ordering? Thanks for the input of course 🙂 On Friday, November 22, 2013, [joergprante@gmail.com](mailto:joergprante@gmail.com) wrote: > Use ICU collation of the ICU plugin for sorting. With the "strength" > level, sort key length may be affected. Sorting depends on locale, so I do > not recommend only indexing first n characters. > > [GitHub - elastic/elasticsearch-analysis-icu: ICU Analysis plugin for Elasticsearch](https://github.com/elasticsearch/elasticsearch-analysis-icu) > > Jörg > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to a topic in the > Google Groups "elasticsearch" group. > To unsubscribe from this topic, visit > [https://groups.google.com/d/topic/elasticsearch/tAhq6GbfuPg/unsubscribe](https://groups.google.com/d/topic/elasticsearch/tAhq6GbfuPg/unsubscribe). > To unsubscribe from this group and all its topics, send an email to > [elasticsearch+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com](mailto:elasticsearch+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com) \ 'elasticsearch%2Bunsubscribe@googlegroups.com');\>. > For more options, visit [https://groups.google.com/groups/opt\_out](https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out). -- Sent from Gmail Mobile -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "elasticsearch" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [elasticsearch+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com](mailto:elasticsearch+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com). For more options, visit [https://groups.google.com/groups/opt\_out](https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out). ---
**Author:** ![jprante](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/jprante/32/44941_2.png) [@jprante](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/jprante)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2013, 12:27pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/alphabetic-sorting-strategies/14554/4 "2013-11-23T12:27:51Z")
The length of a sort key can be reduced by many methods, e.g. run length encoding, more details are available at the Unicode Collation algorithm [http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr10/#Reducing\_Sort\_Key\_Lengths](http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr10/#Reducing_Sort_Key_Lengths) Jörg -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "elasticsearch" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [elasticsearch+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com](mailto:elasticsearch+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com). For more options, visit [https://groups.google.com/groups/opt\_out](https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out). ---
**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/original/3X/1/a/1ac57faf039f6b580b3f104ef42a2a89e41014de.png) [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2017, 2:05am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/alphabetic-sorting-strategies/14554/5 "2017-07-06T02:05:09Z")