Comment on sorting of Roman numerals
redshift@lemmy.zip 2 days agoWould you mind sharing the revelation? I’m not sure yet what’s infuriating. The files are sorted by year primarily; the only tie is 1950, and “I” (in “XIX”) comes before “V” (in “XVIII”) alphabetically, so they’re in order as well.
Alexstarfire@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Read the Roman numeral numbers.
redshift@lemmy.zip 2 days ago
19 and 18 are out of order, but computers don’t sort Roman numerals numerically unless you make them. They’re sorted correctly alphabetically.
Alexstarfire@lemmy.world 2 days ago
But that is what they are talking about. The Roman numbers are out of order. That’s why it’s mildly infuriating. It’s not that what’s happening doesn’t make sense.
IntrovertTurtle@lemmy.zip 2 days ago
Computers sort by characters in order. In English order, I comes before either X or Y. So the fact that these characters are out of order, while on a computer that orders things numerically->alphabetically, means that every part of this image is out of order, by definition of its medium.
jordanlund@lemmy.world 2 days ago
The files are sorted by the numeric year first, up to 1950.
The two files for 1950 are together, as they should be.
But the letters are sorted alphabetically, so XI comes before XV. It doesn’t see that they are numbers, it’s reading them as letters.
If they want it sorted correctly, they should rename the files:
“1950 - 018
1950 - 019”
That would work. Interestingly enough, so would:
“1950 - Eighteen
1950 - Nineteen”