How does Imatch sort objects in “Default” mode? Looking for naming scheme

[WebEngel]

How does Imatch sort files when in Sort mode ,,Default"?  Is this the same as the file system in Windows 7 and Windows Explorer (I never understood this either, to be honest)?

The test files I have are sorted in the following order:
199705
199705xx
199706
199706xx
19970502-122433-001
19970503

As you can imagine, the file names represent a date.  The reason for the corrupted dates is that they are scans and the dates are only guesses.

My full numbering scheme is YYYYMMDD-HHMMSS-nnn.  I use this whenever I have EXIF data (which of course is the case for all pictures I have taken).

I would like to have all pictures in chronological order, and I would like to have a naming scheme for that.

Of course I can make up an exact date and time, but I would prefer the name with less digits.

[Nytewulf]

You can view the sort criteria by going to the bottom of the sort list, clicking on edit, and then selecting Default.  Here, it's Similarity, then File Name (Smart).

For file renaming, I use YYMMDD_OriginalFileName -- but my only reason for renaming files is so that I don't end up with duplicate filenames for different images when the camera file numbering rolls over.

John

[WebEngel]

Thanks for the hint.  The ones that I could use (and that are behind "default) are "name (numeric)" and "name (smart)".  The problem is that I don't really understand what they are.

But the help says that Imatch does the same thing as Windows, so I'll give it a search or experiment a little more.

I still have trouble coming up with a numbering scheme (other than just making up exact timestamps).

[Nytewulf]

For files without time/date information, I just rename them sequentially (0001, 0001, ...).  For images that belong to a definite group, I go with groupname + sequence number.  For my purposes, it's easier to just ensure that every file has a unique name and then categorize them in IMatch.

I'm pretty sure I can explain the sort orders.  But since most of my attempts to be helpful today seem to have been misadventures, I'll leave that to someone else. :-))

John

[WebEngel]

OK, I have found out what happens here:

Win7 treats digits in file names as numbers.  Therefore, "9" < "11".  The number ends with the last digit.  So "9xxx-abc-xxxx" is still "9" from a sorting perspective.  As a consequence, "9x" < "11".  This behavior was introduced with Vista and created some confusion already among Windows users.

It seems Imatch sorts in the same way as Windows.

So I guess I will just fill the filenames with trailing zeros, and everything should be fine.  Not perfect, but will work.

[Mario]

This is why IMatch offers multiple modes to sort strings. For folder names. For category names. And of course for file names.
The smart sort applies the same logic as Windows, in order to sort file names containing numbers properly.

A "string" sort will sort

1
100
2

a "numeric-sensitive sort" (smart sort in IMatch terms) sorts

1
2
100

Of course if you randomly mix numbers and text in your file name at different places, no sort will be able to handle your files in a consistent way. For example, if you plan to include date and time information in file names, it always pays of to use the YYYY-MM-DD format, because it always sorts right. Same for other numerical data.