Arch Linux

thayer

Fellow

From: Vancouver, BC

Registered: 2007-05-20

Posts: 1,560

Website

Why is Nautilus "sort by name" case sensitive? [SOLVED]

I've noticed since switching to Arch that nautilus sorts Folder names as case sensitive, meaning that folders beginning with capital letters appear above all folders beginning with lower case.  If I recall, Ubuntu (and SUSE) don't do this...and according to the GNOME website, Nautilus is supposed to display folders as case-insensitive:

By Name
Select this option to sort the items alphabetically by name. The order of the items is not case sensitive. If Nautilus is set to display hidden files, the hidden files are shown last.

Source: http://www.gnome.org/learn/users-guide/2.2/ch07s06.html

Anyone know if there is a gconf tweak for this behaviour?

UPDATE: see my post below for the solution.

Last edited by thayer.w (2007-07-04 21:38:09)

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thayer williams ~ cinderwick.ca

fwojciec

Member

Registered: 2007-05-20

Posts: 1,411

Re: Why is Nautilus "sort by name" case sensitive? [SOLVED]

Same question here...

JGC

Developer

Registered: 2003-12-03

Posts: 1,664

Re: Why is Nautilus "sort by name" case sensitive? [SOLVED]

You're quoting something from the gnome 2.2 userguide. The default upstream behaviour is to sort case sensitive, thish as been this way for a long while as far as I can remember. If Ubuntu doesn't sort case sensitive, they must have patched their nautilus.

thayer

Fellow

From: Vancouver, BC

Registered: 2007-05-20

Posts: 1,560

Website

Re: Why is Nautilus "sort by name" case sensitive? [SOLVED]

I realize the guide I quoted wasn't the most relevant material, but it was about the only information I could find at the time. 

I have since done a lot of digging around... and found the real source of the problem.  Nautilus (and ls) uses the computer's LOCALE settings to determine how to sort file/directory listings, in particular, the LC_COLLATE variable. By default, and for whatever reason, Arch overrides the preferred language settings by inserting its own LC_COLLATE variable in /etc/profile:

export LC_COLLATE="C"

Simply commenting this one line and restarting the computer will set LC_COLLATE back to the encoding specified by LOCALE in /etc/rc.conf.  In my case, en_CA.utf8.

My files and directories are now sorted alphanumerically case-insensitive as:

Alpha
bravo
Charlie
delta

instead of

Alpha
Charlie
bravo
delta

I hope someone else finds this info useful.

Last edited by thayer.w (2007-07-04 22:03:06)

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thayer williams ~ cinderwick.ca

fwojciec

Member

Registered: 2007-05-20

Posts: 1,411

Re: Why is Nautilus "sort by name" case sensitive? [SOLVED]

Thanks. This was bugging me for quite some time...

klerik

Member

Registered: 2006-08-06

Posts: 15

Re: Why is Nautilus "sort by name" case sensitive? [SOLVED]

thanks man it is long time ago bat stil useful

pazof

Member

Registered: 2017-12-18

Posts: 3

Re: Why is Nautilus "sort by name" case sensitive? [SOLVED]

Posting just in case it helps someone - this post helped me some 14 years later

There was no "export LC_COLLATE=C" line to comment in my /etc/profile file - but what did the trick for me was adding this line instead (to /etc/profile):

export LC_COLLATE=en_US.utf8

Logout/Restart and boom, Nautilus's sort by name is now case-insensitive.

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 23,252

Re: Why is Nautilus "sort by name" case sensitive? [SOLVED]

LC_COLLATE globally will affect a lot more than just nautilus and this this can have "unforeseen" side effects. However please don't necrobump 12 year old threads.

Closing.