Robert_Charlton - 10:20 pm on Oct 17, 2008 (gmt 0)

Thanks... So, what we have is that... when the filename begines with a number... XP, Vista, and Mac OSX are consistent with each other, and that they sort as MS describes in KB-319827, which kaled linked to above....

By default, the newer sort order considers strings in file and folder names as numeric content, not text. Numerals in folder and file names are sorted according to their numeric value.

None of the examples quite covered all possibilities, including what happens in various apps, so I've run the following tests on XP, with some text .txt files. XP (which is to say, Windows Explorer) maintains the numerical values of numbers even when preceded by an alphabetical character). Some second party apps on XP change this order, treating numbers as alphabetical characers....

IN WINDOWS EXPLORER ON XP

85aa.txt
789aa.txt
12345aa.txt
abc.txt
cdf.txt
d85aa.txt
ghi.txt
x85aa.txt
x789aa.txt
x12345aa.txt

IN SECOND-PARTY FILE MANAGER (TOTAL COMMANDER) ON XP

12345aa.txt
789aa.txt
85aa.txt
abc.txt
cdf.txt
d85aa.txt
ghi.txt
x12345aa.txt
x789aa.txt
x85aa.txt

ALPHANUMERIC SORT IN TEXT EDITOR (NOTETAB PRO)

12345aa.txt
789aa.txt
85aa.txt
abc.txt
cdf.txt
d85aa.txt
ghi.txt
x12345aa.txt
x789aa.txt
x85aa.txt