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I was checking my character's spells agains a sorted list of spells. I noticed one spell that was out of order for my character:

Summon Skeleton
Summon Skeleton Guardian
Summon Skeleton Hero
Summon Skeleton Champion <<<
Summon Spider Daedra

I think "Summon Skeleton Champion" should be up two places from where it shows in the game. I am on a PS3, GotY edition, latest updates. I resorted and reverse sorted, still "out of order".

Do other platforms show this same "out of order" spell? What about non-GotY editions?

If this "out of order" spell is also on the PC version, could someone analyze the Summon Skeleton spell names? Maybe list the spells in the console, copy and paste them to a text editor (notepad++?), see if there is anything non-ASCII about these names. Possibly the Champion spell name is proper ASCII and the other Skeleton spells have some non-ASCII character(s) in them.

This is a minor annoyance, not a real problem, but I would like to know what is causing it. I wonder if there are other instances of "out of order" items?

The order is correct if it is based on spell hierarchy for skeletons. Possibly the code behind it (rather than the spelling) is determining placement.

I noticed that, but the Open X Lock spells are in alphabetical order, not hierarchical; Heal X Wounds are in alphabetical order and, almost, reverse strength order. Why would someone work at putting just the one set of spells in hierarchical order?

I thought about how the spell list might be programmed. There could be a hard-coded list and the Summon Skeleton Champion spell was manually put in the wrong slot. But then that means that any mods would have to insert their spells into the list. Then there is the sort by Magicka Cost. Seems clumsy and like a lot of work to me, though it could be done.

Sorting for display of currently acquired spells seems a lot simpler to me. As spells (base or mod) are added to the list, they get sorted for display. If the game does it this way, the simplest possibility is that there is a special character in the name or names.

Hmmm, some programming languages have sort functions with custom comparison routines. C's qsort function comes to mind. One could do the hierarchical there. But why? And why only Summon Skeleton X?

I am thinking someone accidentally pressed a meta-key (alt, ctrl, etc.) when typing the name. Maybe the space between Skeleton and Champion is non-breaking and sorts after regular space? Or there is a zero width space? Or the "n" in Skeleton only looks like a regular n ...

I am using a PS3, so I cannot analyze the spell name. I was thinking someone with a PC and access to the console could figure out if there are special characters in the spell name.

I don't know anything about modding Oblivion on the PC, but the CSList page for our problem spell shows its name as:

Summon Ske~le~ton Champion

I guess that if:
1. The tilde appears after 'a..zA..Z' in the 'alphabetical order' sort Oblivion uses.
2. Oblivion strips out the tilde when displaying the name.

Then that would explain what's going on here?

https://cslist.uesp.net/index.php?game=ob&formid=0x0003c417

Not sure how the tildes got in there in the first place though...

https://cslist.uesp.net/index.php?game= ... ffset=1000

I think that this coding makes sense (415, 416, 417). The simple skeleton is the last in the 000aa05 series, putting it in front of the other skeletons and after scamp but headless zombie is (0x0003c414) so I don't know if it falls in front of the three big skeletons.

Summon Skeleton = 0x000aa05f
Summon Skeleton Guardian = 0x0003c415
Summon Skeleton Hero = 0x0003c416
Summon Ske~le~ton Champion = 0x0003c417

Ding, ding, ding!! I believe that Lord Timster has determined the cause.

The tilde is decimal 126 or 0x73, second to last character in the ASCII table. Lower case l is 108 or 0x6c. That explains the order.

Why there are tildes in the name is probably lost in the mists of time. Using the link provided by Chicken Slayer (I did not know about this list), I searched for tilde and there are 4 spell names and 50 names with tildes. I thought Ske~le~ton looked like syllable division for word breaking, apparently the correct syllabification is skel-e-ton, but the pronunciation is ske-le-ton. I will have to look at game books and game dialog to see if any words are broken across lines.

I can imagine a developer possibly creating the Champion spell at a different time than the other Summon Skeleton spells, knows that the tildes will not be seen by the player but did not consider they would affect the sort. Hmmm, but why are there no tildes in the other two words of that spell? The spell should have been Sum~mon Skel~e~ton Cham~pi~on. Bugger!

I appreciate that y'all took the time to figure out why and to answer my query. Take care and game on.