correct sorting of numbers in album names

[ikonomov]

It would be nice to have the library correctly sort albums with numbers in the title.  Currently they are sorted 1, 10, 11, 2, 3, etc.  This is most relevant for Album names of compilations with volume numbers, but it should apply to numbers inside all text fields.

[andrewilley]

PA treats all characters equally and does a 'proper' ASCII sort on them. This means that just like any other text string which starts with "A" comes before anything that starts with "B", similarly anything starting with "1" comes before anything starting with "2". This means that dual characters such "11" (which starts with the character "1") will be sorted before the single character "2". 

A work-around for this which has been used for years for such things as dates, disc numbers, and track numbers is to pad small numeric values out with leading zeros - so rather than naming files as "1. SomeTrack.mp3", "2. AnotherTrack.mp3", "10. LaterTrack.mp3", etc you use "01. SomeTrack.mp3", "02. AnotherTrack.mp3", "10. LaterTrack.mp3".

However for text content (for example, titles of chapters in audiobooks) I agree it would make sense if the List Options screen provided a setting for "Content Aware" sorting of the type you describe. See also another recent thread on the subject:

Andre

[ikonomov]

I've been waiting patiently to see this change implemented, but so far it hasn't been.  Currently my Galaxy S23 is able to correctly sort numbers inside text fields 1, 2, 3..., 11, 12 (instead of 1, 11, 12... 2, 3) natively inside Samsung Music and its file app, yet Poweramp can't.

[andrewilley]

As mentioned above, Poweramp is already sorting correctly using standard alphanumeric methods for plain ASCII / Unicode strings. Thus in the same way that alphabetic letters in words (ASCII codes 65 to 90) are sorted A, AA, AAA, B, BB, BBB, C, CC, D, etc, so other characters (such as digits, codes 48 to 57) are sorted using the same logic - giving 1, 11, 111, 2, 22, 222, 3, 33, 4, etc.

A solution, which will work for all string sorting methods across all devices, is to pad out numbers with leading zero digits where necessary - so the numbers above would be organised as 001, 002, 003, 004, 011, 022, 033, 111, 222, etc. In most cases for track numbers, just two digits would be ample unless you have more than 99 tracks in an album.

You can add your vote for implementing a 'smart' sorting feature via this link, as it's not currently very high up in the voting priority order.

Andre

[w3wilkes]

On 7/22/2024 at 7:59 AM, ikonomov said:

I've been waiting patiently to see this change implemented, but so far it hasn't been.  Currently my Galaxy S23 is able to correctly sort numbers inside text fields 1, 2, 3..., 11, 12 (instead of 1, 11, 12... 2, 3) natively inside Samsung Music and its file app, yet Poweramp can't.

Curious, in the music you reference where samsung sorts correctly are the sequence numbers the first thing in the album title string and then the title name is identical for all tracks? I would see this much easier to do than embedded, might be fairly doable if suffix'd.

[ikonomov]

On 7/25/2024 at 9:52 PM, w3wilkes said:

Curious, in the music you reference where samsung sorts correctly are the sequence numbers the first thing in the album title string and then the title name is identical for all tracks? I would see this much easier to do than embedded, might be fairly doable if suffix'd.

It's the title then [Disc 1], with the title being the same.

[ikonomov]

On 7/22/2024 at 9:46 AM, andrewilley said:

As mentioned above, Poweramp is already sorting correctly using standard alphanumeric methods for plain ASCII / Unicode strings. Thus in the same way that alphabetic letters in words (ASCII codes 65 to 90) are sorted A, AA, AAA, B, BB, BBB, C, CC, D, etc, so other characters (such as digits, codes 48 to 57) are sorted using the same logic - giving 1, 11, 111, 2, 22, 222, 3, 33, 4, etc.

A solution, which will work for all string sorting methods across all devices, is to pad out numbers with leading zero digits where necessary - so the numbers above would be organised as 001, 002, 003, 004, 011, 022, 033, 111, 222, etc. In most cases for track numbers, just two digits would be ample unless you have more than 99 tracks in an album.

You can add your vote for implementing a 'smart' sorting feature via this link, as it's not currently very high up in the voting priority order.

Andre

Thank you for linking the thread with the voting, strangely when I click on "Vote" the number went from 11 to 10.  In any case, I really hope it gets implemented, a much needed feature imo.