Can Explorer sort order be adjusted?

I find Windows XP Explorer's sort order infuriating.
For example, given a list of folders containing
Firefox Extentions (hex id codes), it presents them
in this order:

{1A2D0EC4-75F5-4c91-89C4-3656F6E44B68}
{1ced4832-f06e-413f-aa14-9eb63ad40ace}
{03B08592-E5B4-45ff-A0BE-C1D975458688}
{20a82645-c095-46ed-80e3-08825760534b}
{38AB6A6C-CC4C-4f9e-A3DD-3C5681EF18A1}
{75CEEE46-9B64-46f8-94BF-54012DE155F0}
{446c03e0-2c35-11db-a98b-0800200c9a67}
{1018e4d6-728f-4b20-ad56-37578a4de76b}
{a7c6cf7f-112c-4500-a7ea-39801a327e5f}
{ACAA314B-EEBA-48e4-AD47-84E31C44796C}
{D4DD63FA-01E4-46a7-B6B1-EDAB7D6AD389}
{EDA7B1D7-F793-4e03-B074-E6F303317FB0}

I see no logic to that order at all! What is Explorer doing?
Trying to calculate numeric values by ignoring the letters and
making a decimal number out of the numerals? Or something else?

And more importantly, is there some way to adjust this to
something more sane? Such as an ASCII sort? Or, better,
a non-case-sensitive alphabetical sort? Or are we stuck
with this idiotic sort order?

--
Puzzled and annoyed,
Robbie Hatley
lonewolf (at) well (dot) com

Robbie Hatley wrote:
I find Windows XP Explorer's sort order infuriating.
For example, given a list of folders containing
Firefox Extentions (hex id codes), it presents them
in this order:

{1A2D0EC4-75F5-4c91-89C4-3656F6E44B68}
{1ced4832-f06e-413f-aa14-9eb63ad40ace}
{03B08592-E5B4-45ff-A0BE-C1D975458688}
{20a82645-c095-46ed-80e3-08825760534b}
{38AB6A6C-CC4C-4f9e-A3DD-3C5681EF18A1}
{75CEEE46-9B64-46f8-94BF-54012DE155F0}
{446c03e0-2c35-11db-a98b-0800200c9a67}
{1018e4d6-728f-4b20-ad56-37578a4de76b}
{a7c6cf7f-112c-4500-a7ea-39801a327e5f}
{ACAA314B-EEBA-48e4-AD47-84E31C44796C}
{D4DD63FA-01E4-46a7-B6B1-EDAB7D6AD389}
{EDA7B1D7-F793-4e03-B074-E6F303317FB0}

I see no logic to that order at all!


If you study harder, there is a logic to the sort order:

1) files are first sorted by digits then by alpha characters.

Now take the first char: On your list if they are digits, they are
likely to be on top; Followed by alphabetic characters.

Same thing with second, third, fourth etc characters;

Do you find the science of sorting very interesting?

Hope this helps.

Tester wrote:
Robbie Hatley wrote:

I find Windows XP Explorer's sort order infuriating.
For example, given a list of folders containing
Firefox Extentions (hex id codes), it presents them
in this order:

{1A2D0EC4-75F5-4c91-89C4-3656F6E44B68}
{1ced4832-f06e-413f-aa14-9eb63ad40ace}
{03B08592-E5B4-45ff-A0BE-C1D975458688}
{20a82645-c095-46ed-80e3-08825760534b}
{38AB6A6C-CC4C-4f9e-A3DD-3C5681EF18A1}
{75CEEE46-9B64-46f8-94BF-54012DE155F0}
{446c03e0-2c35-11db-a98b-0800200c9a67}
{1018e4d6-728f-4b20-ad56-37578a4de76b}
{a7c6cf7f-112c-4500-a7ea-39801a327e5f}
{ACAA314B-EEBA-48e4-AD47-84E31C44796C}
{D4DD63FA-01E4-46a7-B6B1-EDAB7D6AD389}
{EDA7B1D7-F793-4e03-B074-E6F303317FB0}

I see no logic to that order at all!


If you study harder, there is a logic to the sort order:

1) files are first sorted by digits then by alpha characters.

Now take the first char: On your list if they are digits, they are
likely to be on top; Followed by alphabetic characters.

Same thing with second, third, fourth etc characters;

Do you find the science of sorting very interesting?

Hope this helps.


Tester, you're full of it! Follow your own advice, and look at the above
list. Is it sorted according to your rules? No! So STFU!

As to answer the original question, it is related to the so-called
"intuitive" sorting, where anything interpreted as a number, is sorted according
to its value, and not alphabetically, and the letters are sorted next. So, in
the original example, the numbers are sorted in ascending order: 1, 1, 3, 20,
38, 75, 446, 1018 and so on.
To change that behavior, one needs TweakUI - there is a tick box for
"intuitive sorting" in the "Explorer" section. I don't know how else to do it -
there's no doubt a registry key for that, but I've never needed to know which one.

--
You'd be crazy to e-mail me with the crazy. But leave the div alone.
*
Whoever bans a book, shall be banished. Whoever burns a book, shall burn.

Patok wrote:
Tester wrote:
Robbie Hatley wrote:

I find Windows XP Explorer's sort order infuriating.
For example, given a list of folders containing
Firefox Extentions (hex id codes), it presents them
in this order:

{1A2D0EC4-75F5-4c91-89C4-3656F6E44B68}
{1ced4832-f06e-413f-aa14-9eb63ad40ace}
{03B08592-E5B4-45ff-A0BE-C1D975458688}
{20a82645-c095-46ed-80e3-08825760534b}
{38AB6A6C-CC4C-4f9e-A3DD-3C5681EF18A1}
{75CEEE46-9B64-46f8-94BF-54012DE155F0}
{446c03e0-2c35-11db-a98b-0800200c9a67}
{1018e4d6-728f-4b20-ad56-37578a4de76b}
{a7c6cf7f-112c-4500-a7ea-39801a327e5f}
{ACAA314B-EEBA-48e4-AD47-84E31C44796C}
{D4DD63FA-01E4-46a7-B6B1-EDAB7D6AD389}
{EDA7B1D7-F793-4e03-B074-E6F303317FB0}

I see no logic to that order at all!


If you study harder, there is a logic to the sort order:

1) files are first sorted by digits then by alpha characters.

Now take the first char: On your list if they are digits, they are
likely to be on top; Followed by alphabetic characters.

Same thing with second, third, fourth etc characters;

Do you find the science of sorting very interesting?

Hope this helps.


Tester, you're full of it! Follow your own advice, and look at the above
list. Is it sorted according to your rules? No! So STFU!

As to answer the original question, it is related to the so-called
"intuitive" sorting, where anything interpreted as a number, is sorted
according to its value, and not alphabetically, and the letters are sorted
next. So, in the original example, the numbers are sorted in ascending
order: 1, 1, 3, 20,
38, 75, 446, 1018 and so on.
To change that behavior, one needs TweakUI - there is a tick box for
"intuitive sorting" in the "Explorer" section. I don't know how else to do
it
- there's no doubt a registry key for that, but I've never needed to know
which one.

Yes, you don't need TweakUI, if you manually change the registry key as
follows:

Under this key:
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Curre ntVersion\Policies\Explorer]

Look for the "NoStrCmpLogical" subkey, and change its value to 1 (not 0 as
the default value), as shown below:

"NoStrCmpLogical"=dword:00000001
Which effectively means the string is set to true, meaning don't use
"logical" comparison for the sort values".
("logical" referring to what most humans would think is more logical or
intuitive)

Then you get back the regular sort order of the previous versions of
windows.

I can't stand the new (allegedly more intutive) sort order used in XP (and
presumably its successors), but then again, I'm used to the regular sort
order (from some past assembly language programming).

Robbie Hatley wrote:

I find Windows XP Explorer's sort order infuriating.
For example, given a list of folders containing
Firefox Extentions (hex id codes), it presents them
in this order:

{1A2D0EC4-75F5-4c91-89C4-3656F6E44B68}
{1ced4832-f06e-413f-aa14-9eb63ad40ace}
{03B08592-E5B4-45ff-A0BE-C1D975458688}
{20a82645-c095-46ed-80e3-08825760534b}
{38AB6A6C-CC4C-4f9e-A3DD-3C5681EF18A1}
{75CEEE46-9B64-46f8-94BF-54012DE155F0}
{446c03e0-2c35-11db-a98b-0800200c9a67}
{1018e4d6-728f-4b20-ad56-37578a4de76b}
{a7c6cf7f-112c-4500-a7ea-39801a327e5f}
{ACAA314B-EEBA-48e4-AD47-84E31C44796C}
{D4DD63FA-01E4-46a7-B6B1-EDAB7D6AD389}
{EDA7B1D7-F793-4e03-B074-E6F303317FB0}

I see no logic to that order at all! What is Explorer doing?
Trying to calculate numeric values by ignoring the letters and
making a decimal number out of the numerals? Or something else?

And more importantly, is there some way to adjust this to
something more sane? Such as an ASCII sort? Or, better,
a non-case-sensitive alphabetical sort? Or are we stuck
with this idiotic sort order?

See (mentions the registry key that Bill mentioned):

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/319827

Although you'd think 03b... would sort first before 1a2..., leading
zeroes do not affect the numerical value, so 03b starts with a numeric
value of 3 hence why it appears after 1.

Have all updates applied to Windows XP? If not, you might run into
this:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/318872

As Bill mentioned, you don't need TweakUI to make the registry edit;
however, all TweakUI does is make registry edits by showing you the
options for them. So it's up to you whether you want to install
software that lets you pick options and the program knows the registry
keys to edit or if you want to use regedit.exe and dig into the registry
yourself providing you know what you want to edit.

I'd written:

I find Windows XP Explorer's sort order infuriating.
For example, given a list of folders containing
Firefox Extentions (hex id codes), it presents them
in this order:

{1A2D0EC4-75F5-4c91-89C4-3656F6E44B68}
{1ced4832-f06e-413f-aa14-9eb63ad40ace}
{03B08592-E5B4-45ff-A0BE-C1D975458688}
{20a82645-c095-46ed-80e3-08825760534b}
{38AB6A6C-CC4C-4f9e-A3DD-3C5681EF18A1}
{75CEEE46-9B64-46f8-94BF-54012DE155F0}
{446c03e0-2c35-11db-a98b-0800200c9a67}
{1018e4d6-728f-4b20-ad56-37578a4de76b}
{a7c6cf7f-112c-4500-a7ea-39801a327e5f}
{ACAA314B-EEBA-48e4-AD47-84E31C44796C}
{D4DD63FA-01E4-46a7-B6B1-EDAB7D6AD389}
{EDA7B1D7-F793-4e03-B074-E6F303317FB0}

I see no logic to that order at all! What is Explorer doing?
Trying to calculate numeric values by ignoring the letters and
making a decimal number out of the numerals? Or something else?

And more importantly, is there some way to adjust this to
something more sane? Such as an ASCII sort? Or, better,
a non-case-sensitive alphabetical sort? Or are we stuck
with this idiotic sort order?

and "Tester" replied:

If you study harder, there is a logic to the sort order:
1) files are first sorted by digits then by alpha characters.

In other words, it's as I said: Exploder* assumes anything with
numerals is a decimal number, so it sorts it in decimal order,
by ignoring all other characters; then apparently sorts any
decimally-equal strings alphabetically. Which, of course, is
idiotic. It especially makes a mess of hexadecimal numbers.

Do you find the science of sorting very interesting?

I do. Its just so sad that Microsoft doesn't.

Hope this helps.

No.

(*An "Explorer" is a kind of Ford, good for exploring the countryside.
Microsoft's graphical file browser, not being much good for exploring
things, I've decided to call "Exploder" instead.)

--
Cheers,
Robbie Hatley
lonewolf (at) well (dot) com

Regarding making Windows Exploder stop mangling hexadecimal numbers,
"Bill in Co" writes:

If you manually change the registry key as follows:

Under this key:
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Curre ntVersion\Policies\Explorer]

Look for the "NoStrCmpLogical" subkey, and change its value to 1 (not 0 as
the default value), as shown below:

"NoStrCmpLogical"=dword:00000001
Which effectively means the string is set to true, meaning don't use
"logical" comparison for the sort values".
("logical" referring to what most humans would think is more logical or
intuitive)

Then you get back the regular sort order of the previous versions of
windows.


Hey, that works! Thanks! (Actually, I put it in "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE"
instead of HKEY_CURRENT_USER so that it works for all users, but same idea.)


I now get a non-case-sensitive modified ASCII sort, like so:


{03B08592-E5B4-45ff-A0BE-C1D975458688}
{1018e4d6-728f-4b20-ad56-37578a4de76b}
{1A2D0EC4-75F5-4c91-89C4-3656F6E44B68}
{1ced4832-f06e-413f-aa14-9eb63ad40ace}
{20a82645-c095-46ed-80e3-08825760534b}
{38AB6A6C-CC4C-4f9e-A3DD-3C5681EF18A1}
{446c03e0-2c35-11db-a98b-0800200c9a67}
{75CEEE46-9B64-46f8-94BF-54012DE155F0}
{a7c6cf7f-112c-4500-a7ea-39801a327e5f}
{ACAA314B-EEBA-48e4-AD47-84E31C44796C}
{D4DD63FA-01E4-46a7-B6B1-EDAB7D6AD389}
{EDA7B1D7-F793-4e03-B074-E6F303317FB0}


arumba



omfg@olive

d




I can't stand the new (allegedly more intutive) sort order used in XP
(and presumably its successors), but then again, I'm used to the
regular sort order (from some past assembly language programming).

The word "intuitive" should sue you. :-) But then, I suppose that
someone who can look at "1a7B328F7934e2b2" and think "8-byte hexadecimal
number", rather than "what the #$%& is THAT gibberish???" probably has
what most people would consider a "warped" sense of intuition.
Been there, done that.

Reminds me of a conversation I once had with a co-worker:

RH: "Jon, what's the max value of an unsigned long int?"
JF: (without even a split-second hesitation) "4294967295"
RH: "Wow, you memorized that???"
JF: "Believe me, I'm not proud of the fact that that number is
forever burned into the structure of my brain."
RH: "You're weird. Firmware writers are always weird."
JF: "So are you. You write GUI code. That's even weirder."
RH: "Touche."

--
Cheers,
Robbie Hatley

VanguardLH wrote:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/319827

Thanks for the link. Yep, that says what they're doing, but not
why they're doing such an idiotic, useless, damaging, infuriating
thing. (Sadism? Schizophrenia? Sabotage? Someone at MS isn't
in their right mind, seems to me.)

Although you'd think 03b... would sort first before 1a2..., leading
zeroes do not affect the numerical value, so 03b starts with a numeric
value of 3 hence why it appears after 1.

Maybe it depends on the number of digits, which determines the place value
of the first digit? Let's strip the non-numeral characters from
these four strings:

{1A2D0EC4-75F5-4c91-89C4-3656F6E44B68}
{1ced4832-f06e-413f-aa14-9eb63ad40ace}
{03B08592-E5B4-45ff-A0BE-C1D975458688}
{20a82645-c095-46ed-80e3-08825760534b}

STRIPPED VERSION:
1204755491894365664468
14832064131496340
0308592544501975458688
20826450954680308825760534

Hmmm. No, they're not doing it that way, then. Perhaps they're
using hyphens as word-delimiters? Lets leave the hyphens in:

HYPHEN-DELIMITED-VERSION:
1204 - 755 - 491 - 894 - 365664468
14832 - 6 - 413 - 14 - 96340
308592 - 54 - 45 - 0 - 1975458688
2082645 - 95 - 46 - 803 - 08825760534

Yes, that's what they're doing. Hyphens are being used to delimit
separate numbers, and the strings are sorted first by first-number,
then second-number, etc.

It would be soooooooooo easy to write some code that checks if
a string consists only of chars from "0123456789aAbBcCdDeEfF",
and sort it in hexadecimal order. I mean, come on, a human
takes HOW long to recognize a number is hex? 1/2 second?
A computer should be able to figure that out in about 200uS.

But then, a non-case-sensitive ASCII sort would do the same
thing implicitly. So why don't they just do that? Sheeeesh.

... http://support.microsoft.com/kb/318872 ...

Thanks, but I'm up-to-date on all service packs and updates.

... TweakUI ...

How much does that cost?
Wait, I'll google it......
Ah, freeware from cnet.
Editor rating: 5.0 stars. User rating: 4.5 stars.
Cool, I think I'll DL that and play with it;
might come in handy in the future.

--
Cheers,
Robbie Hatley
lonewolf (at) well (dot) com

Robbie Hatley wrote:
Regarding making Windows Exploder stop mangling hexadecimal numbers,
"Bill in Co" writes:

If you manually change the registry key as follows:

Under this key:
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Curre ntVersion\Policies\Explorer]

Look for the "NoStrCmpLogical" subkey, and change its value to 1 (not 0
as
the default value), as shown below:

"NoStrCmpLogical"=dword:00000001
Which effectively means the string is set to true, meaning don't use
"logical" comparison for the sort values".
("logical" referring to what most humans would think is more logical or
intuitive)

Then you get back the regular sort order of the previous versions of
windows.


Hey, that works! Thanks! (Actually, I put it in "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE"
instead of HKEY_CURRENT_USER so that it works for all users, but same
idea.)


I now get a non-case-sensitive modified ASCII sort, like so:


{03B08592-E5B4-45ff-A0BE-C1D975458688}
{1018e4d6-728f-4b20-ad56-37578a4de76b}
{1A2D0EC4-75F5-4c91-89C4-3656F6E44B68}
{1ced4832-f06e-413f-aa14-9eb63ad40ace}
{20a82645-c095-46ed-80e3-08825760534b}
{38AB6A6C-CC4C-4f9e-A3DD-3C5681EF18A1}
{446c03e0-2c35-11db-a98b-0800200c9a67}
{75CEEE46-9B64-46f8-94BF-54012DE155F0}
{a7c6cf7f-112c-4500-a7ea-39801a327e5f}
{ACAA314B-EEBA-48e4-AD47-84E31C44796C}
{D4DD63FA-01E4-46a7-B6B1-EDAB7D6AD389}
{EDA7B1D7-F793-4e03-B074-E6F303317FB0}


arumba



omfg@olive

d




I can't stand the new (allegedly more intutive) sort order used in XP
(and presumably its successors), but then again, I'm used to the
regular sort order (from some past assembly language programming).

The word "intuitive" should sue you. :-) But then, I suppose that
someone who can look at "1a7B328F7934e2b2" and think "8-byte hexadecimal
number",

I would - and do.

rather than "what the #$%& is THAT gibberish???" probably has
what most people would consider a "warped" sense of intuition.

Evidently that's the case. :-)

Been there, done that.

Reminds me of a conversation I once had with a co-worker:

RH: "Jon, what's the max value of an unsigned long int?"
JF: (without even a split-second hesitation) "4294967295"
RH: "Wow, you memorized that???"
JF: "Believe me, I'm not proud of the fact that that number is
forever burned into the structure of my brain."
RH: "You're weird. Firmware writers are always weird."
JF: "So are you. You write GUI code. That's even weirder."
RH: "Touche."

LOL.

On Sat, 23 Apr 2011 21:41:30 -0700, Robbie Hatley
wrote:

I find Windows XP Explorer's sort order infuriating.
For example, given a list of folders containing
Firefox Extentions (hex id codes), it presents them
in this order:

{1A2D0EC4-75F5-4c91-89C4-3656F6E44B68}
{1ced4832-f06e-413f-aa14-9eb63ad40ace}
{03B08592-E5B4-45ff-A0BE-C1D975458688}
{20a82645-c095-46ed-80e3-08825760534b}
{38AB6A6C-CC4C-4f9e-A3DD-3C5681EF18A1}
{75CEEE46-9B64-46f8-94BF-54012DE155F0}
{446c03e0-2c35-11db-a98b-0800200c9a67}
{1018e4d6-728f-4b20-ad56-37578a4de76b}
{a7c6cf7f-112c-4500-a7ea-39801a327e5f}
{ACAA314B-EEBA-48e4-AD47-84E31C44796C}
{D4DD63FA-01E4-46a7-B6B1-EDAB7D6AD389}
{EDA7B1D7-F793-4e03-B074-E6F303317FB0}

I see no logic to that order at all! What is Explorer doing?
Trying to calculate numeric values by ignoring the letters and
making a decimal number out of the numerals? Or something else?

And more importantly, is there some way to adjust this to
something more sane? Such as an ASCII sort? Or, better,
a non-case-sensitive alphabetical sort? Or are we stuck
with this idiotic sort order?

Rather than curse the darkness, try lighting a candle. KB 319827 is
one of the first hits in google.

--
Remove del for email