Always can't separate these guys: ascending and descending! Are there good examples?

Question

As a non-english dude, I have trouble differentiating this.

When I try to translate this into my language, I get something weird like "go up" for ascending. So lets say I want to sort the names of all my pets alphabetically. I want that A comes first, then B, then C... and so on. So since the alphabet is not a number for me, my brain refuses to grok what's "going up". A = 0? B = 1? C = 2? If yes, then ascending would be what I'm most of the time looking for. Table would start showing A, then B, then C... Or is that the other way around? Must I look from the bottom of the table, up?

And with numbers: If it's an ascending order, the smallest comes first? (would seem logical...)

Can someone post a short but good example for what is an ascending sort order, and what is an descending sort order? And does that apply to whatever platform, programming language, API, etc.?

Answer 1

Perhaps Increasing(Ascending) vs Decreasing(Descending) is a better way for you to think of it?

Answer 2

Perhaps this trick might help:

---

A scending

A BCD

---

D escending

D CBA

Answer 3

Most of the time:

• ascending : the order you would normally expect
• descending : the reverse of what you would normally expect

Just think what order you would expect something to be sorted in if you just asked an intern to sort them without saying how. (numbers: smaller before larger, words: apathetically/lexicographically, etc.)

Answer 4

Think of everything as a number... Characters are represented by numbers as well, so:

A = 5 B = 6

Descending is biggest number first. Ascending is smallest number first.

I always get confused with ASC/DESC for dates and times, however once you learn how datetime works, it's easy. A date is simply a number, it represents the number of seconds that have passed since a certain date, so the bigger the number is, the closer to now it is!

Answer 5

I get something weird like "go up" for ascending".

It's not weird... that's exactly what ascending means: that goes up (comes from the Latin word ascendere).

So, for numbers is: 1,2,3,4,5 ... for letters is just alphabetical order: A, B, C, D...

Answer 6

• Ascending order of alphabets are like A, B, C, D . . . Z
• Descending order of alphabets are like Z, Y, X, W . . . A

Answer 7

Bothe are defined by the collation sequence on your system. See the defintion of collation sequence here for example http://www-01.ibm.com/software/globalization/terminology/cd.jsp#c02