Why does Oracle's varchar sort order not match the behavior of varchar comparison?

Peter,

the behaviour of the sorting is regulated by the NLS_SORT session parameter, whereas the behaviour for comparisons is dependent upon the NLS_COMP parameter. You must have a mismatch.

I obtain the same result as you do with the following parameters:

SQL> SELECT *  2    FROM nls_session_parameters  3   WHERE parameter IN ('NLS_COMP', 'NLS_SORT');PARAMETER                      VALUE------------------------------ ----------------------------------------NLS_SORT                       FRENCHNLS_COMP                       BINARY

However when the two are matched the result is consistent:

SQL> alter session set nls_comp=LINGUISTIC;Session alteredSQL> select * from (  2    select '000000000000' as x from dual  3    union  4    select '978123456789' as x from dual  5    union  6    select 'B002AACD0A' as x from dual  7  ) /*where x>'000000000000'*/ order by x;X------------B002AACD0A000000000000978123456789SQL> select * from (  2    select '000000000000' as x from dual  3    union  4    select '978123456789' as x from dual  5    union  6    select 'B002AACD0A' as x from dual  7  ) where x > '000000000000' order by x;X------------978123456789