Re: Human-readable file sorting

[Lars Ingebrigtsen <larsi@gnus.org>]

Marcin Borkowski <mbork@mbork.pl> writes:

> Wouldn't it be cleaner (and more flexible) to introduce a variable
> `file-string-lessp-function'?  Then the user could also account for
> 1,000.23 and similar cases by themselves when needed.  One could then
> even put a special value in .dir-locals.el for e.g. music files (which
> sometimes follow strange naming conventions).

We could allow `file-sorting-method' to be a function in addition to the
special symbols.  I kinda like having predefined symbols for
user-oriented variables, though.  Less chance of users getting
confused.  :-)

> BTW, I like this idea.  FWIW, exactly because of this issue I use
> trailing zeros when naming files, and do not expect file sorting to be
> too smart, but many people don't do this, and renaming files I get from
> them is a pain.

I had a collection of stuff that I had padded with four zeros, and then
I needed another digit.  *sigh*

Computers are really good at doing stuff like sorting, so we should let
them do that, so that humans don't have to do so much work.  :-)

-- 
(domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
   bloggy blog: http://lars.ingebrigtsen.no