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Old March 29th 16, 09:18 AM posted to microsoft.public.windowsxp.help_and_support
R.Wieser
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Posts: 1,302
Default Explorer filename sorting - disable ignoring of the hyphen ("-") char ?

VanguardLH,

Yep, Microsoft handles the hyphen a bit weird, like they ignore it.

....
To get the same order using the 'dir' command, you have to add
the /on argument, as in:


Thanks for confirming my posted observations.

They are doing something goofy regarding non-alphanumeric
characters.


Yep, that was my conclusion too. It might well be only the hyphen symbol
though, but who knows.

When wrote the above I realized I did not even search for an MS explanation
to this sorting behaviour. Alas, a quick search did not turn up anything in
that regard ...

And that brings me back to my initial question: How do I get Windows to drop
all kinds of fancy sorting rules and revert to (something like) ASCII order
?

.... though I would not mind if upper and lowercase differences are ignored
(man, I do not make it easy, do I ? :-D )

Regards,
Rudy Wieser


-- Origional message:
VanguardLH schreef in berichtnieuws
...
R.Wieser wrote:

My previous subject "Explorer filename sorting problem - NoStrCmpLogical
already present" has evolved into a much simpler one: How do I get XP's
explorer (but the "dir" command too!) to stop ignoring the minus sign

inside
filenames

60.00.00.32.dds
60.00.00.32.msh
60.00.00.32.nif
60.00.32.32.dds
60.00.-32.32.dds
60.00.32.32.msh
60.00.-32.32.msh
60.00.32.32.nif
60.00.-32.32.nif

the reason why the above is "sorted" as it is -- with the third column
showing an interleaved "33" and "-32" -- is because the minus sign is
regarded as a hyphen (a word-coupling character) and ignored. The above
list than translates to:

60.00.00.32.dds
60.00.00.32.msh
60.00.00.32.nif
60.00.32.32.dds
60.00.32.32.dds
60.00.32.32.msh
60.00.32.32.msh
60.00.32.32.nif
60.00.32.32.nif

... which makes (some sort of) sense.

But as those "-" characters inthge first list are *NOT* hypens (but
minus-signs) that second list isn't reflecting the meaning of the

filenames
contents. :-(

tl;dr:
How do I get XP's explorer (and "dir" command too) to stop ignoring the
minus sign inside filenames.

Or more in general: How do I stop it from treating *any* character
specially, and just sort all of them on their binary value.


Had some more time to play. Yep, Microsoft handles the hyphen a bit
weird, like they ignore it. They are doing something goofy regarding
non-alphanumeric characters.

What I did was to replace the hyphen with a different non-alphanumeric
character, like tilde, underscore, or backquote, so the list looks like:

60.00.~32.32.nif 60.00._32.32.nif 60.00.`32.32.nif
60.00.~32.32.dds 60.00._32.32.dds 60.00.`32.32.dds
60.00.~32.32.msh 60.00._32.32.msh 60.00.`32.32.msh
60.00.00.32.dds 60.00.00.32.dds 60.00.00.32.dds
60.00.00.32.msh or 60.00.00.32.msh or 60.00.00.32.msh
60.00.00.32.nif 60.00.00.32.nif 60.00.00.32.nif
60.00.32.32.dds 60.00.32.32.dds 60.00.32.32.dds
60.00.32.32.msh 60.00.32.32.msh 60.00.32.32.msh
60.00.32.32.nif 60.00.32.32.nif 60.00.32.32.nif

To get the same order using the 'dir' command, you have to add the /on
argument, as in:

dir /on

(or 'dir /o-n' if you descend sort in Windows Explorer).



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