I'm trying to figure out why CompareStringA returns CSTR_EQUAL for the strings "\1" and "\2". (See bug 5469, and the todo_wine test case in dlls/kernel/tests/locale.c) CompareStringA does the usual thing, calls MultiByteToWideChar and calls CompareStringW. So CompareStringW is comparing L"\0001" to L"\0002". CompareStringW calls wine_compare_string, in libs/unicode/sortkey.c That calls compare_unicode_weights. That has this little bit of code: ce1 = collation_table[collation_table[*str1 >> 8] + (*str1 & 0xff)]; ce2 = collation_table[collation_table[*str2 >> 8] + (*str2 & 0xff)]; With the strings L"\0001" and L"\0002", *str1 is 0x0001, and *str2 is 0x0002. So *str1 >> 8 is 0, and *str2 >> 8 is 0. *str1 & 0xff is 0x01, *str2 & 0xff is 0x02. So, ce1 == collation_table[1], which is 0x00000300 (in collation.c), and ce2 == collation_table[2], which is 0x00000400. That gets us here: if (ce1 != (unsigned int)-1 && ce2 != (unsigned int)-1) ret = (ce1 >> 16) - (ce2 >> 16); else ret = *str1 - *str2; Well, 0x00000300 >> 16 is 0, and so is 0x00000400, so ce1 - ce2 is 0, so these strings are considered equal. But as the test case shows, they're not supposed to be. I'm just not sure what to do about it. Changing collation.c isn't really an option, since it's generated. So there's some flaw in the logic here, but I don't understand the meaning of collation_table. Could someone explain to me what it is? Thanks, --Juan