Sorting a list of files in a folder...

Scripting Forums AppleScript | Mac OS X
#1

Hi There,

Just wondered if someone could help me with a small query.

Up to a few months ago I was using the method below to retrieve a list of files in a folder and I used the Finder to sort it by name.

tell application "Finder"
	set thisFolder to choose folder with prompt "Choose the folder containing the PDFs to rename:"
	set theItems to every file of thisFolder
	
	set theItems to (theItems sort by name)
end tell

I’ve recently been using set theItems to paragraphs of (do shell script "ls " & p) to get a folders contents which has worked fine apart from one slight niggle.
I realise the returned results are different in each method however, I wondered, what would be the best way to sort the returned list by name as in the above example?

If someone could give me some pointers I’d be grateful.

Thanks,

Nick

#2

ls has a case sensitive sort by default but you can rearrange the items by using sort command

set theItems to paragraphs of (do shell script "ls " & quoted form of posix path of thisFolder & " | sort -f")
#3

Thought this had worked but my mistake.

If I have 1000 files in a folder named file1, file2, file3 … file998, file999, file1000 etc, when using the ls command the returned list comes back file1, file11, file12, file13, file14 etc not file1, file2, file3, file4…
It’s not listed ‘naturally’ ?

Is there a way round this?

Thanks again,

Nick

#4

Nick:

Given a simple list with a common nomenclature.
file 1.ai
file 2.ai
file 3.ai
file 4.ai
file 5.ai
file 6.ai
file 7.ai
file 8.ai
file 9.ai
file 10.ai
file 11.ai

An ls does return: file 1.ai file 11.ai, file 2.ai, etc.

If we push it into a ls | sort we get similar results: file 1.ai file 11.ai, file 2.ai, etc.

If we use a key on the sort (and this is where the common convention is necessary) we can sort on a given part of the return.
ls | sort -k2 -n returns: file 1.ai, file 2.ai, file 3.ai,. file 10.ai, etc.
List files | sort on the second key numerically. Optionally you could add -r to reverse the sort.

Hope that helps.

Cheers,
Jim
BLUEFROG

#5

Thanks for the explanation Jim, it’s a big help.
The code works great. :slight_smile:

Thanks again for your time.

Nick

#6

My pleasure, Nick. :slight_smile:

Jim