Greetings! I have a directory of files that I use to create a database, using the directory as my starting point. On Debian, the files appear in this order: 01-matthew.xml 02-mark.xml 03-luke.xml 04-john.xml If I create an empty database and then add the files one by one, in that order, then //title[@type="main"] returns: ΚΑΤΑ ΜΑΘΘΑΙΟΝ ΚΑΤΑ ΜΑΡΚΟΝ ΚΑΤΑ ΙΩΑΝΗΝ ΚΑΤΑ ΙΩΑΝΗΝ On the other hand, if I start at the directory, add xml files, the database is created and //title[@type="main"] returns: ΚΑΤΑ ΙΩΑΝΗΝ ΠΡΟΣ ΕΦΕΣΙΟΥΣ ΚΑΤΑ ΜΑΘΘΑΙΟΝ ΙΩΑΝΟΥ Α Question (sorry for the long setup): Is the sort order of manually added files an artifact of the manual addition? That is I cannot expect users across systems to experience the same load order as I do? Asking because I'm writing documentation along with example queries for several datasets and documenting random results, isn't likely to be helpful to readers. I am aware I can use db:list(database-name) to obtain and sort on the original file names but that takes me away from the file content. Ah, BaseX 9.7.1 on Debian. You know, the files don't have internal sort attributes. ntorder = "digit" would be enough to sort on that attribute and return the book names in the expected order. I'm sure there are better solutions, suggestions appreciated! Patrick -- Patrick Durusau patrick@durusau.net Technical Advisory Board, OASIS (TAB) Editor, OpenDocument Format TC (OASIS), Project Editor ISO/IEC 26300 Co-Editor, ISO/IEC 13250-1, 13250-5 (Topic Maps) Another Word For It (blog): http://tm.durusau.net Homepage: http://www.durusau.net Twitter: patrickDurusau