When using a regex expression ("name=^joe" is starts with "joe" and "name=*joe" is contains "joe") you can add c:exactMatchFirst=true to bubble exact matches to the top despite the c:sort. Hopefully this is useful for character name searches. Example: http://census.soe.com/s:example/get...c:limit=10&c:sort=name&c:exactMatchFirst=true
