windows file sorting in a directory [duplicate] - windows

This question already has answers here:
Windows 7 Explorer cannot sort files alphabetically
(2 answers)
Closed 6 years ago.
I'm just programming some functions concerning sorting files in a windows directory (windows 7).
While testing I found out, that if you have two files:
a3s.txt
a-s.txt
Windows does NOT put the "a-s.txt" to the first place, although "-" has ASCII code 45 and "3" has ASCII code 51.
This only happens in windows explorer, it does not happen in windows command shell.
Why is this?
Thanks a lot in advance
EDIT:
This is not a duplicate question.
In the other postings they talk about situations, when the file names contain numbers. But here the problem also happens when you have "a_s.txt" and "a-s.txt". Furthermore the problem does not only happen in Windows 7, but also on Windows Server 2003.

This is by design. MSFT uses a custom sorting algorithm in Windows Explorer that they believe is more intuitive for most users. For more information and a brief history, see this TechNet article. The article describes that the custom sorting began with Windows XP, which was the precursor to Server 2003.
"This is not a duplicate question"
The symptoms are different, but the root cause is the same. Windows Explorer does not use lexicographical sorting.

Related

Is there a documentation describing "full" windows directory structure?

I simply would like to have and study the way directories are in windows nt versions more specific 7, 10. I've searched a bit and i haven't found any kind of full documentation about that. I know it's complicated the way windows is, but theres got to be some fully described top-down documentation of windows default apllications and their location and why it is stored in that place and not any other.
I know i could identify each folder, app individually but thats not what i'm looking for.
I am not looking for information only about windows top directiories like that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directory_structure
(Disclaimer: I worked at Microsoft and while I wasn't in OSG (I was in STB/DevDiv) I browsed enough of the internal documentation and Windows source-code out of my own curiosity to get a general idea - but don't take my answer as authoritative as I'm sure someone with better first-hand experience can probably answer better than I can)
I know it's complicated the way windows is, but theres got to be some fully described top-down documentation of windows default apllications and their location and why it is stored in that place and not any other.
Short answer: There isn't a publicly accessible single authoritative catalog or documentation of the C:\Windows\... filesystem structure. When I was at Microsoft there wasn't even a single catalog available internally (at least, not that I was aware of - again, I wasn't in OSG so there may have been some tribal knowledge I missed-out on - or it was buried in an internal SharePoint site) - though individual feature teams did generally keep their own documentation for the changes they introduced, of course - and at least tried to maintain any inherited documentation from older teams since disbanded - that said, there's also an intentional dearth of documentation and material internally regarding Windows between 1995 and 2002 thanks to the Sun Java lawsuit (the paranoid lawyers in LCA yanked all internal builds of Windows 95 through Windows XP SP1 and lots of associated documentation, unfortunately - I had to get special approval from my skip-level to get a copy of Windows 2000 when I was doing some historical research for my team in 2013).
As for "why" Windows's C:\Windows is the way it is - it's largely a product of its own history and Microsoft's honorable quest for backwards-compatibility rather than a contrived grand design. I recommend starting off at the beginning with Windows 1.0 (you can find a VM image with it preinstalled if you know where to look) through Windows 3.0 - things really take shape with Windows 95. The next big change was in Windows 2000 (inherited by Windows XP) and then Windows XP x64 (which gave us SysWow64 for 32-bit files and System32 for 64-bit files - yeah, it's silly). Other than Vista adding MUI subfolders for localized resources there haven't been many significant user-visible changes since then.
Each Windows feature team will have their own ideas about where they want to put their files in a Windows installation - and about how much they want to document it for TechNet. Granted, there are conventions that apply (and plenty of people to tell them they have a bad idea) - but for example, there was no overriding technical reason why the Windows Media Center folk put their files in C:\Windows\ehome instead of C:\Program Files\Windows Media Center or C:\Windows\System32\ehome (given that System32 is already home to plenty of non-kernel components).
Also, remember that many key components of Windows don't live in C:\Windows at all, such as the bootloader (which lives on its own EFI partition), many userland and pack-in applications that are under C:\Program Files, and Microsoft's push to greater componentize the operating-system via AppX, so things like MSPaint will eventually live under C:\Program Files\WindowsApps\.

Is there anywhere I can download VB6 these days? [duplicate]

This question already has answers here:
Where can I get a VB6 IDE [duplicate]
(2 answers)
Closed 7 years ago.
I have a couple of decades of experience with VB6. I could share this knowledge with those people who are still asking questions about it: but I cannot test my code or confirm my thinking without a copy of the thing. I know it's very, very obsolete: but I lost my job last year due to disability, so I am coding at home.
I have the latest c#, obviously, in the form of the Express edition of the latest Visual Studio. But is VB6 available from any legitimate sources?
VB6 is available to MSDN subscribers
You can still buy original sealed copies on ebay. But the prices are still surprisingly high, probably due to the rarity and lack of MS support.
Have you considered switching to VBA instead? Modern MS Office versions have this installed as standard (I think) and according to wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_Basic_for_Applications): "Microsoft has clearly stated that they have no plans to remove VBA from the Windows version of Office."
VBA is pretty close to VB6 apart from being able to compile it. But for syntax and general programming help I think it's still valid for testing out code samples and so forth.
Another thing you could try is to approach any schools, colleges or small businesses in your area. All three of these kinds of establishments are likely to have reasons to own legitimate copies of VB6 an have probably long since stopped using them but they may still be sat on a shelf gathering dust.
Schools and colleges love to sell off old assets because it keeps the accountants happy and frees up some forgotten cash to buy books and chalk with :). Perhaps you could offer to buy them at a low price. I'm sure they'll consider it.

SSRS substitutes font when printing or exporting to PDF

I've come across a handful of questions relating to older version of SSRS/SQL Server but nothing recent relating to this issue with SQL Server 2012. I cannot understand why this apparent bug would not be fixed when reported since SQL Server 2008.
Anyone, my question, has anyone had a similar issue and found a solution to a report in SSRS looking fine when previewed in Visual Studio as well as the default view on the server? Yet when I print preview, print or export to PDF, my selected font of Garamond is being replaced by a generic MS Sans Serif. Exporting to Word and Excel do not seem to suffer this bug. If you look at the properties in the resulting PDF, the Garamond is not there, just two generic MS fonts. When printing, the text flows as if the Garamond is there but words are being chopped off in every element on the page.
Apparently other users have had this bug and submitted an issue to Microsoft.
https://connect.microsoft.com/SQLServer/feedback/details/546276/ssrs-report-printing-the-wrong-font
It's over 5 years old and while it is still open, Microsoft hasn't said that they will fix it which means they probably never will - even though there are no workarounds.
Here's another one from 7 years ago that was closed for no reason:
https://connect.microsoft.com/SQLServer/feedback/details/403130/sql-reporting-services-2008-print-rendering-issue-font-replacement-font-missing-character-space-compression
They have some threshold of how many people experience the error AND follow the proper Microsoft procedure (like have lengthy instructions so they can repro) for reporting it (so about 1 in 10,000) before they think about addressing an issue. If enough people ask, they'll probably change this Bug from Active to Works As Designed.

How does Firefox Version 3 invoke the anti-virus feature on Windows to scan a download?

Another question on StackOverflow is asking how this is done, but the general question of how Firefox manages this is even more useful, and would answer that question also.
Without reading all the source code to firefox (I haven't time) - is anyone familiar enough with Firefox V3's ability to invoke a scan on any downloaded EXE file to know how it works?
I would think any anti-virus program with active protection would hook into windows and be run automatically. Does firefox detect these hooks and bring them up by creating a windows folder and moving the file after it is downloaded from a temporary filename, to a new file name with .exe in the name, thus triggering the automatic protection? Or do they do something else?
(This is a programming question in that I want to know how to write this in general, and this would answer the above question, but also be a good piece of knowledge to add to the knowledgebase-that-is-stackoverflow.)
Also, any programmatic SDKs and APIs that commercial anti-virus programs provide for end-user application integration, I would like to know about. Especially MS Forefront, MS Security Essentials, Norton, or any other major players.
OESIS from opswat appears to provide this as a commercial SDK/application, which is a surprise when it probably should be a Windows API, given that what we're doing here is in the public good of all humans who have to use windows.] - actually it is - it is built into the windows shell. See the first link in this question for more resources.
I did a quick search through the Mozilla code base and found these source files:
./toolkit/components/downloads/src/nsDownloadScanner.cpp
./toolkit/components/downloads/src/nsDownloadScanner.h
A comment close to the top may have your answer:
Download scanner attempts to make use
of one of two different virus scanning
interfaces available on Windows -
IOfficeAntiVirus (Windows 95/NT 4 and
IE 5) and IAttachmentExecute (XPSP2
and up). The latter interface
supports calling IOfficeAntiVirus
internally, while also adding support
for XPSP2+ ADS forks which define
security related prompting on
downloaded content.

Decompiler for Visual Basic 6 program? [duplicate]

This question already has answers here:
Is there a Visual Basic 6 decompiler? [closed]
(6 answers)
Closed 3 years ago.
In the FAQ of the Boomerang decompiler (which currently only decompiles to C-code) they make a brief mention that Visual Basic exes happen to include a lot of metadata, so a Visual Basic decompiler might be able to produce better source code for Visual Basic programs than what Boomerang can give you. Since the program I'm trying to decompile might actually be a VB 6 program, do you know of any decompilers for VB6 exes?
(Don't worry this isn't for nefarious purposes. I just have to create a data file this program parses, and getting a sense of the strategy it uses to parse the file will help get the file format right.)
You might want to try VBReFormer
VB Decompiler is another tool. And works fine too!)

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