why doesn't the "dir /on" command work properly?

the dir /on command does NOT list the files in alphabetical order!

I tried on some folders, no problem. On the folder with 1548 files the
listing will not come up properly in alphabetical order.

Anyway to fix this?

At least in works in 'sections', but still wanted the whole list in
one pass.

Robert Macy wrote in news:2604668c-b9fa-4bdf-bb7b-
:

the dir /on command does NOT list the files in alphabetical order!

I tried on some folders, no problem. On the folder with 1548 files the
listing will not come up properly in alphabetical order.

Anyway to fix this?

At least in works in 'sections', but still wanted the whole list in
one pass.



There's a limit on how many it will cope with. I don't know what that limit
is, but I've seen redirects to file whose output includes lines stating too
many records to sort, or some such... But if you DO redirect, you can sort
those lines in an editor like TextPad, which lets you block select columns so
you can sort according to each column of data. Use a fixed-width font...

Robert Macy wrote in news:2604668c-b9fa-4bdf-bb7b-
:

the dir /on command does NOT list the files in alphabetical order!

I tried on some folders, no problem. On the folder with 1548 files the
listing will not come up properly in alphabetical order.

Anyway to fix this?

At least in works in 'sections', but still wanted the whole list in
one pass.


Instead of redirecting to file to sort that, you can also try SORT.EXE, which
sorts in columns, but it might be pointless, if there are too many files, you
need to redirect to file to see everythign easily, and trying to do that in
combination with piping (dir... | sort...) is a headache in the making and
maybe not possible (I couldn't do it). SORT might be just as limited as DIR
in the number of lines it can cope with, too.

DOS commands often have limits when handling large or complex tasks, so I
always use them in a basic way to capture all the data I want, then process
that afterwards (TextPad or Lua scripting being more than enough to handle
all stuff I need).

On Sep 26, 4:53*am, Lostgallifreyan wrote:
Robert Macy wrote in news:2604668c-b9fa-4bdf-bb7b-
:

the dir /on command does NOT list the files in alphabetical order!

I tried on some folders, no problem. On the folder with 1548 files the
listing will not come up properly in alphabetical order.

Anyway to fix this?

At least in works in 'sections', but still wanted the whole list in
one pass.

Instead of redirecting to file to sort that, you can also try SORT.EXE, which
sorts in columns, but it might be pointless, if there are too many files, you
need to redirect to file to see everythign easily, and trying to do that in
combination with piping (dir... | sort...) is a headache in the making and
maybe not possible (I couldn't do it). SORT might be just as limited as DIR
in the number of lines it can cope with, too.

DOS commands often have limits when handling large or complex tasks, so I
always use them in a basic way to capture all the data I want, then process
that afterwards (TextPad or Lua scripting being more than enough to handle
all stuff I need).

Thank you didn't think of using external editor to sort.

I have sort.exe [DOS program] and a batch field that saves the
original called sortbak.exe.

I'll try them and see what happens.

On Sep 26, 4:53*am, Lostgallifreyan wrote:
Robert Macy wrote in news:2604668c-b9fa-4bdf-bb7b-
:

the dir /on command does NOT list the files in alphabetical order!

I tried on some folders, no problem. On the folder with 1548 files the
listing will not come up properly in alphabetical order.

Anyway to fix this?

At least in works in 'sections', but still wanted the whole list in
one pass.

Instead of redirecting to file to sort that, you can also try SORT.EXE, which
sorts in columns, but it might be pointless, if there are too many files, you
need to redirect to file to see everythign easily, and trying to do that in
combination with piping (dir... | sort...) is a headache in the making and
maybe not possible (I couldn't do it). SORT might be just as limited as DIR
in the number of lines it can cope with, too.

DOS commands often have limits when handling large or complex tasks, so I
always use them in a basic way to capture all the data I want, then process
that afterwards (TextPad or Lua scripting being more than enough to handle
all stuff I need).

that should have been batch file: sortbak.bat, not sorbak.exe !!

just tried it using
sort /+45 directry.txt $nudir.txt

and it worked great !!!

Thanks for jogging my memory. aren't those old DOS programs great!

Hard to believe how powerful that 20kB program is.
Written today for Windows 7, bet it would be at least 10MB

Robert Macy wrote in news:1f5f9e44-fa6c-4082-a138-
:

just tried it using
sort /+45 directry.txt $nudir.txt

and it worked great !!!


Neat sidestepping of the piping problem. Didn't think of intermediate file
this time.. As the pipe | only does that anyway, making it explicit not
implicit is better, we get more control of it.

If you find a limit to Sort.exe's capacity for lines, post the gory details.
I'm giving up caffiene so my motivation isn't what it might otherwise be.