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Collation & text

Locale-aware comparison, sorting, substring search, word/sentence segmentation, truncation, case mapping, and quotation — all backed by ICU's collator and break iterators.

Availability

Everything on this page works identically in PHP, JavaScript, Python, and Java — except quote(), which is JS-blocked (see the last section). (The collation and segmentation methods landed in PHP in v3.)

Compare & sort

const sv = new Cosmo("sv");
sv.compare("a", "b");                  // -1
sv.sort(["år", "zebra", "ar"]);        // ["ar", "zebra", "år"]

Cosmo sv = new Cosmo("sv");
sv.compare("a", "b");                            // -1
sv.sort(List.of("år", "zebra", "ar"));           // [ar, zebra, år]

$sv = new Cosmo('sv');                 // Swedish
$sv->compare('a', 'b');                // -1
$sv->sort(['år', 'zebra', 'ar']);      // ['ar', 'zebra', 'år']  (å sorts last)

sv = Cosmo("sv")
sv.compare("a", "b")                   # -1
sv.sort(["år", "zebra", "ar"])         # ["ar", "zebra", "år"]

sort() takes an optional key accessor (Python) for sorting objects/dicts by a field; Java uses the collator directly as a Comparator. Pass options with numeric (so "file2" < "file10") or caseFirst to tailor collation in any port.

Collation-aware contains() can ignore case and accents.

const c = new Cosmo("en");
c.contains("Café society", "cafe");               // true
c.contains("Café", "cafe", "variant");            // false

Cosmo c = new Cosmo("en");
c.contains("Café society", "cafe");               // true
c.contains("Café", "cafe", "variant");            // false

$c = new Cosmo('en');
$c->contains('Café society', 'cafe');             // true  (base: ignore case & accent)
$c->contains('Café', 'cafe', 'variant');          // false (exact)

c = Cosmo("en")
c.contains("Café society", "cafe")                # true
c.contains("Café", "cafe", "variant")             # false

Sensitivity: base (ignore case & accents, default), accent, case, variant.

Word & sentence segmentation

const c = new Cosmo("en");
c.splitWords("Hello, world! foo");         // ['Hello', 'world', 'foo']
c.splitSentences("Hi there. How are you?"); // ['Hi there.', 'How are you?']

Cosmo c = new Cosmo("en");
c.splitWords("Hello, world! foo");          // [Hello, world, foo]
c.splitSentences("Hi there. How are you?"); // [Hi there., How are you?]

$c = new Cosmo('en');
$c->splitWords('Hello, world! foo');       // ['Hello', 'world', 'foo']
$c->splitSentences('Hi there. How are you?'); // ['Hi there.', 'How are you?']

c = Cosmo("en")
c.split_words("Hello, world! foo")         # ['Hello', 'world', 'foo']
c.split_sentences("Hi there. How are you?") # ['Hi there.', 'How are you?']

splitWords() keeps only word-like segments (drops whitespace and punctuation), following the locale's boundary rules — essential for languages without spaces. splitGraphemes() breaks on user-perceived characters (emoji/ZWJ sequences stay whole).

Grapheme-safe truncation

new Cosmo("en").ellipsize("The quick brown fox", 12);   // "The quick…"

new Cosmo("en").ellipsize("The quick brown fox", 12);   // "The quick…"

new Cosmo('en')->ellipsize('The quick brown fox', 12);  // "The quick…"

Cosmo("en").ellipsize("The quick brown fox", 12)        # "The quick…"

Truncates to at most N graphemes, breaking on a word boundary and never splitting a combining sequence.

Locale-aware case

new Cosmo("tr").upper("istanbul");    // "İSTANBUL"
new Cosmo("en").upper("istanbul");    // "ISTANBUL"
new Cosmo("en").lower("HELLO");       // "hello"

new Cosmo("tr").upper("istanbul");    // "İSTANBUL"
new Cosmo("en").upper("istanbul");    // "ISTANBUL"
new Cosmo("en").lower("HELLO");       // "hello"

new Cosmo('tr')->upper('istanbul');   // "İSTANBUL"  (Turkish dotted I)
new Cosmo('en')->upper('istanbul');   // "ISTANBUL"
new Cosmo('en')->lower('HELLO');      // "hello"

Cosmo("tr").upper("istanbul")         # "İSTANBUL"
Cosmo("en").upper("istanbul")         # "ISTANBUL"
Cosmo("en").lower("HELLO")            # "hello"

Unlike a plain strtoupper/toUpperCase, these honour locale rules — Turkish dotted/dotless I, German ß, Lithuanian accents, and so on.

Quotation marks

Wrap text in the locale's own quotation marks, straight from CLDR delimiter data.

new Cosmo("en").quote("hello");    // "“hello”"
new Cosmo("de").quote("hallo");    // "„hallo“"
new Cosmo("fr").quote("bonjour");  // "« bonjour »"

new Cosmo('en')->quote('hello');   // "“hello”"
new Cosmo('de')->quote('hallo');   // "„hallo“"
new Cosmo('fr')->quote('bonjour'); // "« bonjour »"

Cosmo("en").quote("hello")         # "“hello”"
Cosmo("de").quote("hallo")         # "„hallo“"
Cosmo("fr").quote("bonjour")       # "« bonjour »"

quote() is PHP, Python & Java

The CLDR delimiter data isn't exposed by the JavaScript Intl API, so quote() is omitted there (these tabs show no JS). See Platform notes.