Understand GIST file list order.

!GIST file list order - summary.md

Summary	How to control (or Understand) your GIST page's files list order.
Notice	not official documentation.

#z_Sample_Punctuation.txt

This is sample file name leading number sign.

The reason of second charactor 'z' is :
   bring this below the `#Control GIST File Order.md`

-_Sample_Punctuation.txt

This is sample file name leading hyphen.

1_Sample_Digits.txt

This is sample file name leading digits.

README.md

How to control GIST file listing order

PLEASE NOTE: This is NOT official specification document.

Basic Spec

• Basically, ASCIIbetical order. But grouping by First character.
• If two files have completely same name without casing, they will be ordered by creation time (older first).

First character

• Some signs come before DIGITS
  • maybe !, #, - and . always come before digits 0-9.
• Digits 0-9
• Some signs come after DIGITS
  • maybe _ always come after digits 0-9.
• Alphabetic characters come after signs and digits
  • ignore casing.

Extensions

Extensions are only characters part of filename.

Sample Cases

Case 1: same extensions

a_abc.txt, #_abc.txt, 1_abc.txt, __abc.txt will

Filenames
#_abc.txt
1_abc.txt
__abc.txt
a_abc.txt

Case 2: different extensions

a_abc.txt, #_abc.txt, 1_abc.txt, a_abc.md, #_abc.md, 1_abc.md, a_abc.js, #_abc.js, 1_abc.js, 2_abc.txt, 2_abc.md will:

Filenames
#_abc.js
#_abc.md
#_abc.txt
1_abc.js
1_abc.md
1_abc.txt
2_abc.md
2_abc.txt
a_abc.js
a_abc.md
a_abc.txt

Case 3: different names and same extension.

HIJ.txt, abc.txt, opQ.txt, HIK.txt will

Filenames
abc.txt
HIJ.txt
HIK.txt
opQ.txt

aaa.txt, ZZZ.txt will

Filenames
aaa.txt
ZZZ.txt

AAA.txt, zzz.txt will

Filenames
AAA.txt
zzz.txt

Thease means caracter-case are ignored.

Case 4: same name and extensions but different casing

a_abc.txt, a_ABC.txt

If you create a_abc.txt first, a_abc.txt comes before a_ABC.txt . If you create a_ABC.txt first, a_abc.txt comes after a_ABC.txt .

Conclusion

If you want to bring a file comes before any others, rename that file with leading ! is easy way.

__Sample_Punctuation.txt

This is sample file name leading underscore.

a_Sample_Lower.txt

This is sample file name leading lower case character.

A_Sample_Upper.txt

This is sample file name leading upper case character.

This is really useful, thanks for this!
+1