String sorting bug

To reproduce:
Edit examples/basic.htm and change "Intuit Inc." in the data to an empty string, "". Then launch basic.htm and try sorting by Company Name.

When there's an empty string within the rows of a column, it stays somewhere in the middle when sorted.

Yes, another bug.

any fix for this? it still seems to be broken

Here is a fix:

obj.setDataProperty("value", function(i,j){
    var text = "" + this.getDataText(i, j);
    if (text.match(/^\s*$/)) {return ""}
    var value = Number(text.replace(/[ ,%\$]/gi, "").replace(/\((.*)\)/, "-$1"));
    return isNaN(value) ? text.toLowerCase() + " " : value;
});

I have an alternate fix - patched grid.sort()

obj.sort = function(index, direction){

  var model = this.getModel("row");
  if (model.sort) {
    return model.sort(index, direction);
  }

  var a = {};
  var rows = this.getRowProperty("values");

  if (direction && direction != "ascending" ) {
    direction = "descending";
  }
  else {
    direction = "ascending";
  }

  if (this.getSortProperty("index") != index || this.getSortProperty("direction") != direction) {
    var dir = (direction == "descending") ? -1 : 1;
    for (var i=0; i<rows.length; i++) {
      a[rows[i]] = this.getDataProperty("value", rows[i], index);
    }
    // @@@ main changes here
    // also optimized for descending sorting
    rows.sort(function(x,y){return a[y] == "" || a[x] > a[y] ? 1 * dir : (a[x] == a[y] ? 0 : -1 * dir)});
  }

  this.setRowProperty("values", rows);
  this.setSortProperty("index", index);
  this.setSortProperty("direction", direction);
};

obj.setDataProperty("value", function(i,j){
    var text = "" + this.getDataText(i, j);
    if (text.match(/^\s*$/)) {return "!"}
    var value = Number(text.replace(/[ ,%\$]/gi, "").replace(/\((.*)\)/, "-$1"));
    return isNaN(value) ? text.toLowerCase() + " " : value;
});

almost worked for me, note returning "!" was needed to get the thing to work right - bizarro especially as the solution worked as given on the basic.html grid.