A Question About the Sort Order of folders in Windows Explorer

[Gary]

I'm collecting some old music files, arranged chronologically, into
subfolders, and the order of the subfolders hopefully reflects the
times of the recording. But the two folders:

Mills Brothers 1931-32 0676
Mills Brothers 1931 0660

show up in Windows Explorer in the order I show them above. Yet I
thought that the blank (after 31) preceeded the "-" in collating
sequence. Maybe I'm wrong.

Can anyone suggest how I could rename them so "1931 " would appear
before "1931-32"?

 

[Meat Plow]

I'm collecting some old music files, arranged chronologically, into
subfolders, and the order of the subfolders hopefully reflects the
times of the recording. But the two folders:

Mills Brothers 1931-32 0676
Mills Brothers 1931 0660

show up in Windows Explorer in the order I show them above. Yet I
thought that the blank (after 31) preceeded the "-" in collating
sequence. Maybe I'm wrong.

Can anyone suggest how I could rename them so "1931 " would appear
before "1931-32"?

Sort them in decending order?

 

[Mark Dormer]

Add spaces around the hyphen

Mills Brothers 1931 0660
Mills Brothers 1931 - 32 0676

Regards
Mark Dormer

 

[dadiOH]

I'm collecting some old music files, arranged chronologically, into
subfolders, and the order of the subfolders hopefully reflects the
times of the recording. But the two folders:

Mills Brothers 1931-32 0676
Mills Brothers 1931 0660

show up in Windows Explorer in the order I show them above. Yet I
thought that the blank (after 31) preceeded the "-" in collating
sequence. Maybe I'm wrong.

Can anyone suggest how I could rename them so "1931 " would appear
before "1931-32"?

Either...
1931-***
1931-32 ***
or...
1931 ***
1931 -32 ***

IOW, the same character has to follow the "1931" in both file names.


--

dadiOH
____________________________

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LP/cassette and tips & tricks on this and that.
Get it at http://mysite.verizon.net/xico

 

[relic]

I'm collecting some old music files, arranged chronologically, into
subfolders, and the order of the subfolders hopefully reflects the
times of the recording. But the two folders:

Mills Brothers 1931-32 0676
Mills Brothers 1931 0660

show up in Windows Explorer in the order I show them above. Yet I
thought that the blank (after 31) preceeded the "-" in collating
sequence. Maybe I'm wrong.

Can anyone suggest how I could rename them so "1931 " would appear
before "1931-32"?

Microsoft KB article 319827:
"The sort order for files and folders whose names contain numerals is
different in Windows XP than it is in Windows 2000"

 

[Gary]

I want to thank a number of you who suggested how I could get around a
strange sort order. Some of them were very good and *I'll be using
the one closest to the way I do things today.

Nonetheless I'm still curious how it got to be that way. Why does the
dash (x'2D") come before the blank (x'20')?

 

[Mike Nute]

I want to thank a number of you who suggested how I could get around a
strange sort order. Some of them were very good and *I'll be using
the one closest to the way I do things today.

Nonetheless I'm still curious how it got to be that way. Why does the
dash (x'2D") come before the blank (x'20')?

Windows XP uses the entire number when sorting filenames, instead of
sorting them character-by-character. So, they are showing up in that order
because 32 is being compared to 660.

You can change this behaviour in the registry, so that it will sort
character-by-character, see here:

http://www.winguides.com/registry/display.php/1293/

--
(e-mail address removed) -> The wizard's name is spelled backwards.
http://webpages.charter.net/merlin112/

Anything not nailed down is mine.
Anything I can pry loose is not nailed down.

 

[relic]

Nonetheless I'm still curious how it got to be that way. Why does the
dash (x'2D") come before the blank (x'20')?

*Blink* ??

You just ignored the link I gave you, didn't you.