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Natural Order

Natural Order is a System Extension that improves the sorting order that your Macintosh uses when it displays lists of items that have numbers in the name.

If you have a group of numbered files on your disk and you select "View By Name" in the Finder, you might expect the files to be displayed in sensible numerical order, like this:

Picture1.jpg
Picture2.jpg
Picture3.jpg
Picture4.jpg
Picture5.jpg
Picture6.jpg
Picture7.jpg
Picture8.jpg
Picture9.jpg
Picture10.jpg
Picture11.jpg
Picture12.jpg

If you've ever had a group of numbered files on your disk, you'll know that the Finder doesn't do this. When you select "View By Name" what you get looks like this:

Picture1.jpg
Picture10.jpg
Picture11.jpg
Picture12.jpg
Picture2.jpg
Picture3.jpg
Picture4.jpg
Picture5.jpg
Picture6.jpg
Picture7.jpg
Picture8.jpg
Picture9.jpg

This looks stupid, and it's because the System is just sorting the names lexicographically. By the same logic that dictates that "ab" comes alphabetically before "c" (which is correct) the System decides that "12" comes before "3" (which is stupid). D'oh! Natural Order works by overriding the System's comparison of the numerical portions of strings, and sorts them by numerical value instead of "alphabetical" value.

— http://www.naturalordersort.org/

Compatibility

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