Mail tfurrows [at] sdf.org
Here's an interesting topic: FAT filesystem sorting under DOS. As far as I understand, files on a FAT filesystem, when listed with the 'dir' command (no arguments), are displayed in the order in which they appear in the FAT. That is to say, they are not sorted at all. Basically, the newest file will appear last in the list. I suppose you could say that they are sorted by date, but in reality, they're not sorted, they're just displayed in a defacto newest-last order.
Thankfully, the 'dir' command offers many sorting options: name, size, ext, date/time, group-dir-first, and compression ratio. But what if you're just obsessive with that default 'dir' listing? What if you really, really want them to default to a different sort order, and you don't want to set an environment variable (DIRCMD env var will let you set a default sort order) or do some other trickery?
Enter a small utility called SORTS.EXE, "File Sorter - Version 4.06" from SoftLogic Solutions, Inc. You fire up SORTS and tell it which drive letter you want to work with. Answer a few questions about primary and secondary sorting methods, and then tell it if you want to sort the whole disk, the root, or some other folder, and then the magic starts. Sorts will go over your whole FAT and actually re-sort the files and directories for you in the filesystem.
So, for those few odd folks who care about this sort of sorting nonsense, you are not left without a solution.
