it's so confusing that the order changes when adding IDENTICAL strings to BOTH filenames. Is this really how it's supposed to be?
this post was submitted on 28 Nov 2024
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Check the top: apparently "5" < "5.5" but "5 A" > "5.5 A". It's probably because a substring is lexicographically before the string containing it.
But when comparing
5 Awith5.5 Athe second characters' 'and'.'get compared and apparently'.'<' '.agree on your point though.
I see, but wouldn't it make more "human readable sense" to order spaces before any other character? Any human working with analog archives would rank 5 A before 5.5 A, since they think 5 is 5.0 in their head
I don't know the exact reasoning for it, I would guess it's because '.' is also used to delimit file types "A book on the.pdf" < "A book on the pdf.pdf" or "Book.pdf" < "Book sequel.pdf"
I guess your confusion has in part to do with reading digits as numbers, but within a string they are part of an alphabet, every character stands on its own and has no relation to the characters around it. There is no difference between "5 1", "5.1" and "511" you just pick an ordering of the alphabet and then sort each character accordingly.