Sort Order of File and Folder Names

Windows only

Beyond Compare follows Windows Explorer's sort order for file and folder names.  Windows XP and newer sort filenames by numeric value.  Windows 2000 and older sort filenames as text, not as numbers.

Numeric sort (default)

5.txt
11.txt
88.txt

Text sort (requires registry edit)

11.txt
5.txt
88.txt

To change from numeric sort to text sort

1. Open the Windows Registry Editor.
2. Create the DWORD registry value:
   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Currentversion\Policies\Explorer\NoStrCmpLogical
3. Set the value to 1.

Microsoft Knowledge Base reference.