Folder naming - sorting information

[Guest Montrose guy]

I want to create folders that will be listed alphabetical at the BOTTOM of a

sort..I have been naming a folder something like "ZZ_Misc stuff".. and the

letter 'Z' forces it to be at the bottom - since I seldom have any folders

beginning w the letter Z. Numerals and spaces in folder names place the

folders at the TOP of the sort.. so my question: is there a symbol or some

character to name a folder BESIDES using the letter Z to place that folder

BELOW the leter 'Z' ??

[Guest sandy58]

Re: Folder naming - sorting information

 

On May 29, 4:35 am, Montrose guy

<Montrose...@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote:

> I want to create folders that will be listed alphabetical at the BOTTOM of a

> sort..I have been naming a folder something like "ZZ_Misc stuff".. and the

> letter 'Z' forces it to be at the bottom - since I seldom have any folders

> beginning w the letter Z. Numerals and spaces in folder names place the

> folders at the TOP of the sort.. so my question: is there a symbol or some

> character to name a folder BESIDES using the letter Z to place that folder

> BELOW the leter 'Z' ??

 

I had a try here with -z +z +1z -1z +2z etc. Try it. Get's kinda

strange. I don't know if it's any good to you, though, Montrose guy.

Good luck.

Glasgow guy. :-)

[Guest Rene Brehmer]

Re: Folder naming - sorting information

 

On Wed, 28 May 2008 20:35:00 -0700, Montrose guy wrote:

> I want to create folders that will be listed alphabetical at the BOTTOM of a

> sort..I have been naming a folder something like "ZZ_Misc stuff".. and the

> letter 'Z' forces it to be at the bottom - since I seldom have any folders

> beginning w the letter Z. Numerals and spaces in folder names place the

> folders at the TOP of the sort.. so my question: is there a symbol or some

> character to name a folder BESIDES using the letter Z to place that folder

> BELOW the leter 'Z' ??

 

It completely depends on your locale settings. Windows' sorting system is

rather retarded made to say the least. If you change your locale settings

it completely changes how it sort things. The rules are completely

different for each locale, and especially with non-english characters it

gets really annoying because the sort rules aren't even correct for many

regions. Mixing folders with names from multiple languages, this becomes

extremely annoying and can make it nearly impossible to find anything

because nothing is ever where it should logically be.

 

For instance, in Danish ÆØÅ are the last 3 letters of the alphabet. aa is

pronounced like å, but it is still indexed like 2 As in modern Danish (in

old rules, before 1985, AA was considered the same as Å). Yet in Windows,

AA gets indexed the same as Å, making it a huge mess and nearly impossible

to find anything with double As. That's when the machine is set to Danish

locale. Switch it to an English locale (such as England, or USA), all of a

sudden folders starting with Æ are indexed as AE (which is partly correct

because Æ is AE ligature, but it's wrong because Æ doesn't exist in the

English alphabet and as such it should be treated as it is in its native

alphabet), Ø gets indexed as an accented O (you get used at that), and Å

becomes indexed as accented A.

 

Windows doesn't even index accented characters right. It puts them before

the non-accented versions, which is wrong, they're supposed to be AFTER.

Windows also look for worded numbers, so if you have a folder that starts

with One, it will be indexed as 1, and not the alphabetical letters it

should. Same with two, three, and so forth. Considering many times names

with such words are actually titles, this means it again indexes them

wrong.

 

All other systems follow very similar sorting rules, where only certain

special characters (non-alphabetic) gets sorted slightly different. But

Windows' method is locale dependent, and because the rules aren't all in

tune with the ones actually in use in that locale, sorting anything can

become a nightmare in itself.

 

That said, there's a specific DLL in your system32 folder that does the

actual sorting (the name elude me atm sorry). If you're handy with C++ and

MFC you can modify it and build your own custom sorting system.

 

I'm Danish, I live in Canada. I speak several languages. I work with data

gathering, organization, analysis, and sorting massive amounts of data of

many sorts, from many sources. Windows' way of sorting things can become an

extreme reason of frustration when you have data in hundreds of thousands

of folders and trying to find just one. Its search function isn't reliable

enough to find it for you, because it has trouble finding anything when

there's a lot of items in a folder.

--

Rene Brehmer

IT Technician

 

North Hill Inn

http://www.northhillinn.com