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I Feel so Dirty: Folder Names with "_" in Front

Discussion in 'Fred's House of Pancakes' started by TonyPSchaefer, Mar 31, 2010.

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  1. TonyPSchaefer

    TonyPSchaefer Your Friendly Moderator
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    So I have an iMac now. I got it for Christmas. There's very little that I don't like about it. But there's something that really bothers me: I really like having the folder sort to the top of a list in Finder. This is a carry-over from Microsoft Windows where the folders are almost always on top.

    So I've resorted to what I have always considered a technological sin against mankind and all that is holy. I start my folder names with an underscore ( _ ). I have been to two separate Apple stores and have talked this over with the Geniuses there. The only way they could get the folders to sort to the top is to sort the Finder window by type. This accomplishes one thing but screws up the alphabetical sorting of the files.

    Perhaps I'm being too picky. Perhaps I really do want the best of both worlds. Perhaps I would get accustomed to the folders being sorted just like the files. But for right now I'm using the underscores. I don't like that I'm resorting to such crass abuse of the sorting hierarchy, but it's what I've become.
     
    #1 TonyPSchaefer, Mar 31, 2010
  2. cwerdna

    cwerdna Senior Member

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    I guess you could start your folders off with other chars that start earlier, like A or 1... But, that looks just as bad or worse.
     
    #2 cwerdna, Mar 31, 2010
  3. patsparks

    patsparks An Aussie perspective

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    You're unbelievable Tony. I never thought you would stoop so low!!

    :confused:
     
    #3 patsparks, Mar 31, 2010
  4. thegreatll

    thegreatll New Member

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    you make me sick
     
    #4 thegreatll, Mar 31, 2010
  5. jayman

    jayman Senior Member

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    You gotta do what you gotta do
     
    #5 jayman, Mar 31, 2010
  6. Rokeby

    Rokeby Member

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    Start each folder name with !@#$%. :roll:
     
    #6 Rokeby, Mar 31, 2010
  7. eagle33199

    eagle33199 Platinum Member

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    I have lost all my faith in you Tony. For shame.
     
    #7 eagle33199, Mar 31, 2010
  8. dogfriend

    dogfriend Human - Animal Hybrid

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    Make Finder sort by type with Folders at top

    This link explains how to modify Finder.app so that folders will be listed first when listing "By Kind". It is supposed to work with Leopard (10.5). I haven't tried it, but I found the page by doing a Google search. If it works as advertised, you won't need to use "_" or any other prefix to get folders to list before files.
     
    #8 dogfriend, Mar 31, 2010
  9. b2j2

    b2j2 Member

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    Try a space (" "). Works in OS 10.4.11 and earlier.

    Mac user since 1984
     
    #9 b2j2, Mar 31, 2010
  10. usbseawolf2000

    usbseawolf2000 HSD PhD

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    If an underscore make you feel dirty, use a dollar sign. :)

    I have always used ~ in DOS or Windows.
     
    #10 usbseawolf2000, Mar 31, 2010
  11. TonyPSchaefer

    TonyPSchaefer Your Friendly Moderator
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    Yeah. Thanks.
    This is the only semi-viable solution the Apple Geniuses could provide. The thing is that I don't always want files sorted by type. I rarely sort that way and only when I can't find it alphabetically.
     
    #11 TonyPSchaefer, Mar 31, 2010
  12. Tom183

    Tom183 New Member

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    As with all technology, the weak link is the thing in front of the monitor...

    This is why databases never allow a "miscellaneous" category, and why everything at work is either "top priority" or "top priority".
     
    #12 Tom183, Mar 31, 2010
  13. chimo

    chimo Junior Member

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    You can also color-code folders and files in Finder.
     
    #13 chimo, Mar 31, 2010
  14. markderail

    markderail I do 45 mins @ 3200 PSI

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    Now start making folders with a "." (period) as the first character.
     
    #14 markderail, Mar 31, 2010
  15. octavia

    octavia Active Member

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    AND this my friends.... is the biggest complaint he could come up with for his mac.

    Kind of like going from a Ford to a Toyota huh Tony. ;)
     
    #15 octavia, Mar 31, 2010
  16. nerfer

    nerfer A young senior member

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    Welcome to the Good side!
    That is one of the few annoyances with Mac OS X. I think it's a direct result of the Unix underpinnings (and so I would also avoid starting a name with '.').

    Mac user since 1989, Apple user since 1981, back when 48 KB was all the RAM you would ever need. Until '83, when 64 KB was all the RAM you would ever need.
     
    #16 nerfer, Mar 31, 2010
  17. bedrock8x

    bedrock8x Senior Member

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    Just run Windows on your Mac.:)
     
    #17 bedrock8x, Mar 31, 2010
  18. qbee42

    qbee42 My other car is a boat

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    My Linux systems running gnome desktop float the folders to the top just fine, and keep everything in alphabetical order at the same time.

    Don't blame Unix for the bad Apple user interface. One of the nice things about Unix and Linux is that the windows manager, windows decorator, and shell are all modular. You can use whatever one you want. Apple wrote their own to make it look like the traditional Mac interface, but in typical Apple fashion they handcuffed the user to it so that you are forced to do it their way.

    Tom
     
    #18 qbee42, Mar 31, 2010
  19. dogfriend

    dogfriend Human - Animal Hybrid

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    Not exactly true, there are 3rd party Finder replacements available. Pathfinder is one of them.

    Path Finder 5 by Cocoatech

     
    #19 dogfriend, Mar 31, 2010
    1 person likes this.
  20. hobbit

    hobbit Senior Member

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    Well, you could always just do everything in a Terminal command-line
    environment like the real men do, and when you want to see your
    directories you just do "ls -d */". If you want to get fancy, you
    can alias "lsd" to "ls -lF \!* | egrep /$", csh style, to save typing.
    .
    Seriously, I would heartily *disrecommend* using spaces, dollarsigns,
    leading periods, asterisks, etc in any filename. They are anathema to
    unix shell environments, and the spaces-in-filenames thing especially
    screws up websites to which such files are uploaded.
    .
    Eventually you may get to the point where you want to do
    "defaults write com.apple.Finder QuitMenuItem -bool yes"
    and just splat-Q the silly thing shortly after booting up, and
    hang out in operating environments that are much more versatile.
    .
    _H*
     
    #20 hobbit, Mar 31, 2010
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