Vista - Funny alphabetation in Windows explorer

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".

"chasgl" <chasgl@newsgroup> wrote in message
news:85FF7737-D13D-4098-866F-625E240A209B@newsgroup

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

"Richard G. Harper" wrote:

On Thu, 1 Oct 2009 22:25:01 -0700, chasgl
<chasgl@newsgroup> wrote:

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.



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.

--
Ken Blake, Microsoft MVP (Windows Desktop Experience) since 2003
Please Reply to the Newsgroup

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
rc@newsgroup
Microsoft Windows MVP
Windows Live Mail 2009 (14.0.8089.0726) in Win7 Ultimate x64

"chasgl" <chasgl@newsgroup> wrote in message
news:6782FA07-3369-433A-8C06-825AE1B77646@newsgroup

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.


"Ken Blake, MVP" wrote:

That's an excellent suggestion thanks. I had checked that article already.
It doesn't explain the behavior.
Thanks,
Chas
"R. C. White" wrote:

chasgl wrote:
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]

"chasgl" <chasgl@newsgroup> wrote in message news:85FF7737-D13D-4098-866F-625E240A209B@newsgroup

It maybe caused by support for 8dot3 naming convention.

8dot3 Name as the appear in Explorer
10/05/2009 04:51 AM <DIR> 200908~3 2009 08 27 Near Ali and Saida's mostly biking
10/05/2009 04:51 AM <DIR> 200908~4 2009 08 28 Saida and Ali return Arc de Triumph and Tour Effel
10/05/2009 04:51 AM <DIR> 20E603~1 2009 08 29 Sacre-coer
10/05/2009 04:51 AM <DIR> 200908~1.ALI 2009 08 30. Vaux-Le-Vicomte. Ali+M+C
10/05/2009 04:51 AM <DIR> 2009-0~1.BRE 2009-01-04. Dhyana-Terri in town.breakfast
10/05/2009 04:51 AM <DIR> 2009-0~1.MAT 2009-02-27. Party-Selim.Saida,Ali.Dan.Matt
10/05/2009 04:51 AM <DIR> 2009-0~4 2009-09-14 Lemgo
10/05/2009 04:51 AM <DIR> 20BB6C~1 2009-09-23 Austin Property

8dot3 naming convention goes back to the days of DOS. 8 letters (filename) dot (separator) 3 letters (file extension). It's there to support old programs that still use the 8dot3 naming convention to find files.

For whatever reason Explorer maybe using the 8dot3 naming convention to sort the directories.


You can turn it off.

How to Disable the 8.3 Name Creation on NTFS Partitions
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/121007

1. Start Regedt32.exe and locate the following registry key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSystem
2. Select the NtfsDisable8dot3NameCreation entry.

NOTE: By default, the value for this entry is set to 0.
3. On the Edit menu, click DWORD. Type a value of 1 in the Data field.
4. Click OK and then quit Regedt32.
5. Quit Windows NT and turn off your computer.
6. Restart your computer and Windows NT.

As the KB notes, this works only for file or directory created after the registry change and reboot.

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
"Tae Song" wrote: