About unicode string comparison

Hi,
Can anyone here explain why the 2 Japanese strings are equal?
select case when N'あきよ' = N'ア_ヨ' then 'true' else 'false' end
select convert(varbinary,N'あきよ')
select convert(varbinary,N'ア_ヨ')
Thanks,
JamesJames,
They are equal under a Kana-insensitive collation. If you need to
distinguish them, use a Kana-sensitive collation. Equality of strings
is based on the rules of the collation in effect, not the strings' binary
representations.
select
case when N'あきよ' = N'ア_ヨ' collate Latin1_General_CS_AS_KS_WS
then 'true' else 'false'
end
This returns 'false'
Steve Kass
Drew University
James Ma wrote:

>Hi,
>Can anyone here explain why the 2 Japanese strings are equal?
>select case when N'あきよ' = N'ア_ヨ' then 'true' else 'false' end
>
>select convert(varbinary,N'あきよ')
>select convert(varbinary,N'ア_ヨ')
>Thanks,
>James
>|||Thank you so much.
"Steve Kass" wrote:

> James,
> They are equal under a Kana-insensitive collation. If you need to
> distinguish them, use a Kana-sensitive collation. Equality of strings
> is based on the rules of the collation in effect, not the strings' binary
> representations.
> select
> case when N'あきよ' = N'ア_ヨ' collate Latin1_General_CS_AS_KS_WS
> then 'true' else 'false'
> end
> This returns 'false'
> Steve Kass
> Drew University
> James Ma wrote:
>
>