MARC Sort: How to truncate a sort key

An extension to the 'MATCH' option, added in version 2.39, allows you to truncate sort keys for variable fields to a specified number of bytes.

The syntax for this is to enter the argument

Len=

in the 'MATCH' box, followed by a number ('Len' is not case-sensitive), where the number entered becomes the maximum number of bytes used in a sort key.

For example, you might use

Len=20

when sorting a file on Tag 245 to find all records where the first twenty bytes of each title are the same. This truncation is performed after all other normalization.

Here is an example screenshot of showing this new usage: