Sorting letters before numbers.

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Level 1

62 points

Sorting letters before numbers.

So it would seem that iTunes now sorts letters before numbers.

I've never known this on any system before but I've had a look around & it seems to have taken place a while back. (I've only just bought a new MacBook & have been using a very old Powerbook & old iTunes for a while.)

Anyway, it seems pretty stupid to me but it doesn't really bother my either way. What does seem odd is this:

Numbers sort FIRST if they're not the first character, so here:

In the above screen shot, VW 2 & VW 5 come before VW C.

But if I remove the VW, the selected album shoots to the bottom & 2 then comes after W.

Unless I'm missing something really obvious (which is extremely likely!), I'm not sure my brain is quite big enough to comprehend this.

MacBook Pro (15-inch, 2017), macOS High Sierra (10.13.3)

Posted on Apr 1, 2018 3:22 PM

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Answer 1

turingtest2

Level 10

278,263 points

Apr 1, 2018 4:34 PM in response to del.frost

If a string, ignoring some punctuation, leads with a numeric value, then iTunes should try to sort by value, placing such items after those sorted alphabetically A to Z. I.e.

A

Z

3

21

123

Instead of:

123

21

3

A

Z

Which is what you would get with a plain character based sort.

Anything that comes after this initial ordering is sorted as a regular alphanumeric sort with digits before letters.

tt2

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Sorting letters before numbers.

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