[Bug]: Unexpected Tag Sorting Results

[Computerdores]

Checklist

• I am using an up-to-date version.
• I have read the documentation.
• I have searched existing issues.

TagStudio Version

1177632

Operating System & Version

NixOS 26.05

Description

In some cases the tag sorting misbehaves and doesn't put exact tag name matches as the first result:

Expected Behavior

The exact match should always come first in the results

Steps to Reproduce

1. Create tags Anthro and Anatomy with alias anatomy for the Anhtro tag
2. Search for anatomy

Logs

No response

[Computerdores]

There is likely at least one more way to produce this behaviour with a different root cause, but I am waiting for details on that

[TheBobBobs]

This is the correct sorting order. Anatomy isn't an exact match for anatomy due to the leading space.
Although I'm not sure why Anthro is showing up at all in a query for anatomy. It's as if you're seeing the results for the query an

[Computerdores]

This is the correct sorting order. Anatomy isn't an exact match for anatomy due to the leading space.

Yes this is what the code does, but it is not what we intended this to do.

The proper way to fix this is probably to strip whitespace from the beginning and end of tag names.

Although I'm not sure why Anthro is showing up at all in a query for anatomy. It's as if you're seeing the results for the query an

Yeah sorry forgot to mention that I added the "anatomy" alias for the Anthro tag

[TheBobBobs]

The sorting done in search_tags is currently being overwritten by the SearchPanel.

With the current way search_tags is sorting its results, names will always come before aliases with the same sort_key value. This would still give the same results you're currently gettng due to the leading spaces but if sort_key is changed to ignore leading whitespace then this should no longer be an issue.