Incorrect File Sorting in Project Window #4180

Not a bug, rather a missing feature. Alphabetical sorting like this is sometimes desirable, as not all groups of digits in file names represent a single number each, or even a number at all. Windows has "smart" number sorting like you proposed by default and it's tripped me up more than a few times. I prefer the current sort myself, because it works well with both numeric and non-numeric digits, provided one uses leading 0s for the numeric ones.

However, it would be nice to have an option in that panel (or in Preferences, if this can apply elsewhere as well) to allow users to sort groups of digits as numbers (OP's proposal), or sort them as characters (current).

Currently I'm relying on QDir::SortFlags to do the sorting and unfortunately it does not support a numeric mode. Fortunately, Qt does provide this type of sorting through QCollator since 5.2, which we can use to implement this option after collecting the list of files (possibly relying on a sorting proxy model, to support toggling this optionafter folders have been scanned).