[issue39544] Pathlib PureWindowsPath sorting incorrect (is not natural sort)

[Eryk Sun]

Eryk Sun <eryksun at gmail.com> added the comment:

> Right now PureWindowsPath does probably something like NTFS sorting, 
> but NTFS is not Windows and from a function called 'WindowsPath' I 
> expect a path that would be given in Windows Explorer.

NTFS stores the names in a directory as a btree that's sorted case-insensitively according to the filesystem's casing table. Other filesystems such as FAT32 store names in arbitrary order, maybe FIFO order with reuse of slot indexes when files are deleted, or maybe based on hashing the filename.

The Windows file API does not sort the results of a directory listing. It's up to applications to decide how a listing will be presented. You cite what Explorer does as a standard for "Windows", but there is no such standard that I know of. Maybe implementing a natural sort for Path instances is desirable, but I disagree that appealing to what Explorer does should be the sole basis for this decision. Anyway, it would be a breaking change, which certainly cannot be implemented in 3.8.

Currently sorting is based on the case-folded parts:

     def casefold_parts(self, parts):
        return [p.lower() for p in parts]

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nosy: +eryksun
versions: +Python 3.9 -Python 3.8

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