Windows Sort sequence irritant -- wrong sequence

Hi there

when browsing through tagged music files Windows seems to come up with the WRONG sort sequence

For example if I'm browsing Mozart

Mozart symphonies /CD 1
Mozart symphonies /CD 10
------- /CD 14
Mozart symphonies /CD 2
Mozart symphonies /CD 3


What I want is for the list to be displayed as /CD 1
/CD 2 ....../.CD 10 etc.

Excel also hoses it up too

any ideas on how to fix this without a whole slew of file / track re-tagging / re-numbering.

Seems bonkers to have 10-19, 20-29 etc displayed before 2, 3 etc. I don't want to renumber a whole slew of stuff to for example /CD 01 etc to force sequence correction. I've about 1.7 TB worth of tagged music files !!!.

Cheers
jimbo

cereberus said:

It has always been this way - it is called lexicographical sorting ie text is sorted from left to right. No easy way round it without 3rd party apps.

Basically, sub ten numbers have to be numbered xxxx01, xxxx02 etc ie with a leading zero (or two zeros for sub one hundred if more than one hundred,three if more than 1000 and so on).

Hi there

@cereberus

On my NAS server there's no problem - It's just Windows / File explorer hoses it up.

Also if a Directory / Folder / file / track name etc is longer than around 200 chars then File explorer can't handle it at all !!!!!

Here's what I believe something like it Should look like. (From my NAS server)




These files > 200 chars can't be handled by File explorer -- Why should I rename them - the tracks etc are descriptive of the content.



Cheers
jimbo

cereberus said:

Sure - Different software using different basis.

Windows has always used lexicographical sorting since day 1. All computer systems in old days used that basis (dates back to mainframe days)

Just for clarity, lexicographical sorting does not consider numeric numbers. Numbers are just treated as letters - sorting is in effect on the ascii value of characters from left to right (but clever enough to handle A and a as the same letter). As numbers have ascii numbers lower than letters, this means file names starting with numbers will be before file names starting with a (A).

In essence, it is an overstatement to say Windows hoses it - it just works on a different basis. In the end, I doubt Windows will ever change.

If the regedit proposed works, fine.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Re. length - long filenames are supposed to be in W10 now but .....

You can fudge long file name by mapping a root drive to be a long path.

Z:\ = C:\dir1\dir2\dir3\......dir n\

A bit of a hassle but it works.

Hi there

@cereberus and @dalchina

Thanks for replies - but :

BTW the regedit doesn't fix the problem of File explorer not showing long names.

Long file names will fail on any software relying on Windows / File explorer -- so for example browsing a directory to play a file with say VLC will fail -- or at the best it will truncate the file to something unrecognizeable but sill actually play.

For example





Will need some way without renaming stuff to be able to serve this music up to Windows clients though without a mega rename operation !!!.

My smart TV handles the files OK but I suppose that's because it's an Android based type system with no historical limit on files (based on the old DOS 8.3 format) which Windows still uses - even though we are well into C21 now !!!.

Cheers
jimbo