What character to use to put an item at the end of an alphabetic list? [closed]

I often prepend '_____' to the item I want in first position.
Is there some sort of magical character I could use to put an item at the end of the list?

Something more elegant than "z_item".

Example of this issue for a list of files in Windows Explorer : enter image description here

Another example from Outlook 2010

Actual folder structure :

  • _custom folder1
  • _custom folder2
  • Inbox
  • Sent box
  • Spam folder

Expected folder structure :

  • Inbox
  • Sent box
  • Spam folder
  • [?]custom folder1
  • [?]custom folder2

What caracter could I use?


Solution 1:

I found this thread while wanting folders that sort after Z in Finder on Mac OSX. After several false paths and trial and error, here's what I found:

Characters that sort after Z in Finder (in sort-order)

  • z Lower case Z
  • ι Greek letter
  • Ι Greek letter, capital version of above character, not an "I")
  • Ω Omega
  • 一 Japanese Character? (Thanks, Jam)
  • 口 Japanese character? (Thanks, Jam)
  • 末 Japanese character "End" (Thanks, Jam)
  •  (a private use character) (Thanks, Peter O.)

These are characters others here and in other places on the web, mentioned sort after Z, but that I found DO NOT sort at the end, at least when sorting by name in Finder on Mac:

† ∆ ~ - ſ [ ø ■ |

Solution 2:

The Special lead-in Character that will put your folder at the end of the list without having to resort to using the "z" combo: U+E83A: Private Use. In fact, I believe any of the Private Use characters will work. () Just copy and paste the character between the brackets.

Solution 3:

Don't mess up things using strange characters!

I would not suggest using Private Use characters or non-printable characters because they can really mess up the things when you access your folder from terminal or programming languages. I had annoying issues using 末 or other special characters. For example, using Python 2.7, this is how you will see your folders with the non-printable characters Ω, 末, 口,.

os.listdir(os.getcwd())
Out[2]: ['\xe6\x9c\xab ', '\xe5\x8f\xa3 ', '\xce\xa9 ', '\xee\xa0\xba ']

For someone or something using your folder structure, accessing the folder would be very confusing (and you can see it from the comments like this to the top answer).

So I created a folder with this at the beginning of the name on my Sharepoint drive and now it's there and I can't access it or delete it. :| – Rather Notsay Jun 28 '16 at 21:05

Of course, you can print them, but why make the things so unnecessarily complex? If you want to stay on the safe side, I would suggest using standard characters. Which is the last one depends on your File manager. So here is some code that creates a bunch of folders with all the printables strings in Python so you can test your file manager.

import os
import string
for i in string.printable:
      try:
            os.mkdir(i)
      except OSError:
            print('OSError for %s' %(I))

Once you have sorted by name you can get your answer.

For Windows 10 - Explorer

using standard characters after z up to my knowledge there is only zz and so on. enter image description here

So using zzNameOfTheFolder is an easy and safe way to do to that. So even if it's not nice I would recommend it.

For Mac OS X El Capitan - Finder

enter image description here

The z is the last character but note that there is no distinction between capital letters so a folder named zz can't be stored in the same directory of a folder ZZ

For Ubuntu 16.04 - Nautilus

enter image description here

The hashtag # is the last character. But if you want some more compatibility with other file managers I would use ZZ.

Something more elegant than "z_item"?

I guess this depends on your own concept of elegance and I think StackOverflow should diffuse best and safest practices, not the most elegant. However, in many cases, symmetry can help. What about these safe perhaps more elegant solutions:

ZZFoldernameZZ
Zz-Folder name-zZ
zZ-Folder name-Zz
zZFolderNameZz
zzFoldernamezz