Computer sort sequences

1. NEVER USE SPECIAL CHARACTERS THAT HAVE SPECIAL MEANINGS:
   
   

          ? * % # < > | \ / @ ~ ^ " ' : ; = +
   

   
   
   It is generally ok to use under-score, dash or hyphen, period, exclamation point, space:
   
   

          _      -     .     !     blank-space
   

2. The number of digits is significant when sorting filenames that contain numbers:
   WINDOWS COMPARES DIGITS STARTING WITH LEFTMOST DIGIT
   10 < 2
   
   So if want numbers to sort properly use same number of digits for all and fill unused digits with 0
   00002 > 00010
   
   
3. For dates to sort in chronological order use YYYYMMDD (4 digit year, 2 digit month, 2 digit day)
   20030521 for May 21, 2003
   

   MONTH-DAY-YEAR ORDER YEAR-MONTH-DAY ORDER -------------------- -------------------- 01012000 20000101 01012001 20000121 01212000 20001226 12012003 20010101 12262000 20031201

4. Letters are not case sensitive in Windows but in some other operating systems (such as UNIX Web servers) they are. This can be a factor if you create Web pages on your PC and then upload them to a UNIX server such as RootsWeb - links work on your PC but not on RootsWeb when the case of the filename does not match the case of the link.

            WINDOWS           UNIX
            -------         -------
            aAtemp1         aAtemp1
            Abtemp2         aCtemp3
            aCtemp3         Abtemp2
            bxxxxxx         bxxxxxx

                WINDOWS SORT FILE NAME EXAMPLE
                ------------------------------
                 !temp2.txt
                 _temp1.txt
                 1_CD_books_gene.htm
                 1_GENE_BUY.txt
                 Aatemp4.htm
                 Aatemp4.txt
                 abbreviations_symbols.txt
                 Atemp3.txt
                 gene_sw_misc.txt
                 UShis.html