[arch-general] incorrect sort order in thunar

[Ray Kohler]

On Tue, Jul 31, 2012 at 6:18 PM,  <brainworker at lavabit.com> wrote:
> Hello, folks, once again.
>
> Maybe somebody of you encountered with that problem in thunar.
> ...especially if you use cyrillic letters in file and directory names.
>
> So, I have installed the latest version of thunar (1.4.0), and it
> incorrectly sorts contents of my folders. I can not even understand the
> way thunar sorts content of any folder.
>
> The "sort order" by name in one directory is following (ascending) (from
> top to bottom):
>
> * cyrillic upper letters,
> * hidden (dot) files,
> * digits,
> * lower cyrillic letters,
> * english lower letters,
> * again cyrillic lower letters,
> * english lower and upper letters (together) insensetive to case.
>
> The "sort order" by name in another directory is following (ascending)
> (from top to bottom):
>
> * cyrillic upper letters,
> * digits,
> * cyrillic lower letters,
> * again digits,
> * again cyrillic lower letters,
> * english lower letters,
> * and again cyrillic lower letters.
>
> Before version 1.4.0, everything was OK.
> So what happened to thunar? Why such an "improvement"?

You might check if "ls" sorts in this same odd fashion. It might be a
locale setting - if LC_COLLATE is set to your actual locale, it text
will be sorted as if were natural language (i.e., prose), rather than
sorting in the usual "technical" manner. This means that some kinds of
characters (number, punctuation, maybe other things?) will just be
ignored when sorting, which makes the order look like nonsense.

The usual means to handle this is to set LC_COLLATE=C in
/etc/locale.conf and make sure nothing in your environment (.bashrc,
Thunar config) overrides it. Check your environment variables (in a
terminal) and look at the output of "locale".