DaveS
29 November 2020 23:56
1
Has anyone else noticed when you tell Finder to “sort by name” its strange?
I have 255 files named “file$XX.dat” where XX is 00 to FF
now I don’t expect them to be sorted in NUMERIC order…
but I don’t expect THIS order
$5E $5F $06 $6A $6B $07 $08 $09 $10 ..... $19 $21 ...$33 $40
I would expect them to be sort by the alphanumeric name
$00 ... $0F
$10....$1F
etc.
DaveS
30 November 2020 00:58
3
yes, yes it is…
not only that but the Xcode Asset Catalog, sorts them the same strange way
as does this method I wrote about “Sorting like finder” way back
Its really curious since its not considering the $XX part as numeric OR lexical
Very odd
DaveS
30 November 2020 06:08
5
but in any comparison method… ."$06" is LESS than “$5E” …
It makes it really hard to find a file (via EyeBall Reader 1.0) when they are not in the order expected.
Unless it ignores the $ and the leading zero.
DaveS
30 November 2020 06:23
7
true… but its still “wrong”
1 Like
DaveS
30 November 2020 06:31
8
I have found articles that discuss this (or something similar) and eludes to a difference between “sort by” and “arrange by”… but none of the “solutions” seem to be able to be applied in Catalina
1 Like
If that is the case, someone (probably an intern or someone with reduced experience) thinks that it is right <shakesHead/>
I also have NSStringArraySortMBS in the plugin, which sorts a Xojo array using NSStringCompareMBS , which also uses Apple’s sorting including the sort by number option.
Seems like it doesn’t work for hex numbers, but it works fine for numbers.
Yeah I cant figure what they are doing that things come out the ay they are
Its not obvious
DaveS
30 November 2020 15:30
12
Christian… its not a “hex” number it is two alphanumeric characters. Finder should not be attempting to derive a “context” from a file name
DaveS
1 December 2020 23:59
14
This is not sorting filenames using Xojo… it is sorting them in Finder… so no manipulation of the filename is possible
I get that. Just my take on what MacOS is doing “under the hood”. No idea why…
Are you seeing the same thing if the files don’t have the “$” prefix?
DaveS
2 December 2020 00:50
16
I created another set of files that used $xxx where xxx was completely numeric, and those sorted correctly
Tim
2 December 2020 01:32
17
You know what it looks like to me?
It looks like handling designed to accommodate designers, these weird people who don’t source control their work, who might name a document:
Doc-a
Doc-a1
Doc-a1-good
Doc-a1-new-good
and so on…
1 Like
DaveS
2 December 2020 01:47
18
That doesn’t explain seeing this order…
thats about what I thought it might be doing but that would give something different than
$5E $5F $06 $6A $6B $07 $08 $09 $10 … $19 $21 …$33 $40
as the $06 $07 $08 $09 would be closer to the beginning of the list
Its really a weird organization
Did you guys not see my earlier reply?
MacOS treats numbers as a single character for sorting.
The list is sorted exactly the way MacOS was designed to. Stupidly. But that’s the way it’s done it for like 20 years.