Funny alphabetation in Windows explorer

  • Thread starter Thread starter chasgl
  • Start date Start date
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chasgl

My sweety and I take pictures and store them in folders. I label mine like
this 2009 09 22. My sweety does 2009-09-22. We figured that way they would
appear by date and each of ours would be separate. But the order comes out
like this
2009 08 27 Near Ali and Saida's mostly biking
2009 08 28 Saida and Ali return Arc de Triumph and Tour Effel
<a bunch of other folders>
2009-01-04. Dhyana-Terri in town.breakfast
2009-02-27. Party-Selim.Saida,Ali.Dan.Matt
..
..
..
2009-09-14 Lemgo
2009-09-23 Austin Property
2009 08 29 Sacre-coer
2009 08 30. Vaux-Le-Vicomte. Ali+M+C

So first are some with 2009<space> etc
then some 2009- etc
then some 2009<space> etc

Why would this strange thing happen? Any way to fix it?
Thanks,
Chas
 
That strange thing would happen because dashes, spaces and other punctuation
marks in file or folder names are alphabetized as well as letters and
numbers. If you check a chart of character codes you'll find that a blank
space is the lowest possible character code and therefore will always be
sorted to the top of a list. This has been the way it has always worked in
Windows. It can't be "fixed" because it's not "broken".
 
Since the space is the lowest value we were counting on it ALWAYS being
sorted first. What is actually happening is that it is SOMETIMES being
sorted first. I must have been unclear with my post. The list starts out
with the spaces first then it puts the dashes in the list and the spaces
last.
It certainly matches the definition of strange. If you are right that spaces
should always be first the it also matches the definition of broken.
Thanks for trying to help.
Chas
 
My sweety and I take pictures and store them in folders. I label mine like
this 2009 09 22. My sweety does 2009-09-22. We figured that way they would
appear by date and each of ours would be separate. But the order comes out
like this
2009 08 27 Near Ali and Saida's mostly biking
2009 08 28 Saida and Ali return Arc de Triumph and Tour Effel
<a bunch of other folders>
2009-01-04. Dhyana-Terri in town.breakfast
2009-02-27. Party-Selim.Saida,Ali.Dan.Matt
.
.
.
2009-09-14 Lemgo
2009-09-23 Austin Property
2009 08 29 Sacre-coer
2009 08 30. Vaux-Le-Vicomte. Ali+M+C

So first are some with 2009<space> etc
then some 2009- etc
then some 2009<space> etc

Why would this strange thing happen?
Click to expand...


You call it strange, but it's exactly what I would expect. You are
apparently expecting that both the space and hyphen will be ignored,
but that's not the case for either. A space is not the absence of a
character, it's a specific character, and it's the character that's
sorted to the top of the list. The hyphen comes later in the sort
order, before the letters and numbers.

Any way to fix it?
Click to expand...



You can't "fix" the Windows behavior, because there's nothing wrong
with it. But you can rename the files to make them more consistent.
 
Hi, Chas.

You might find some insight into the sorting algorithm in this KB article:
The sort order for files and folders whose names contain numerals is
different in Windows Vista, Windows XP, and Windows Server 2003 than it is
in Windows 2000
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/319827

Since I don't have the problem myself, I haven't studied this thoroughly,
but It should answer some questions for you.

RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX
(e-mail address removed)
Microsoft Windows MVP
Windows Live Mail 2009 (14.0.8089.0726) in Win7 Ultimate x64
 
Gosh I can tell my first post was hard to understand. I was COUNTING on the
space being a character. I expected ALL the 2009<space> folders to be before
the 2009<dash> folders. That is why I consistently named the ones I wanted
to separate with a <space> and the others with a <dash> . To see if I had
made some mistake in that I tried Agent Ransack. Agent Ransack worked, it put
the folders 2009<space> all to together and the 2009<dash> together. You are
probably right there is not way to fix Windows behavior. But you are wrong
Windows behavior is broken.
 
That's an excellent suggestion thanks. I had checked that article already.
It doesn't explain the behavior.
Thanks,
Chas
 
chasgl said:
Gosh I can tell my first post was hard to understand. I was COUNTING on the
space being a character. I expected ALL the 2009<space> folders to be before
the 2009<dash> folders. That is why I consistently named the ones I wanted
to separate with a <space> and the others with a <dash> . To see if I had
made some mistake in that I tried Agent Ransack. Agent Ransack worked, it put
the folders 2009<space> all to together and the 2009<dash> together. You are
probably right there is not way to fix Windows behavior. But you are wrong
Windows behavior is broken.
Click to expand...


I agree with you, chasgl. Windows behavior is broken. And it's still
broken under Windows-7 (32-bit). I just created/named various folders
similar to your convention. As a test. They do not sort in a logical
manner.

There is probably a way to fool Windows to be consistent. I will leave
that up to you to try and discover. Good luck.

Net_blue


:
[snip]
You can't "fix" the Windows behavior, because there's nothing wrong
with it. But you can rename the files to make them more consistent.
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
On the other hand. Changing the setting to the other sort behavior does fix
this problem in Vista. So I'll do without numerical sorting since it doesn't
work and use the old style which does.
Thanks,
chas
 
Fascinating suggestion. I'm not sure why explorer would use the 8.3 or why
switching to alpha sort instead of numerical sort would affect the outcome.
But the symptoms sure match.
Thanks,
Chas
 
--
Peter

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