Interestingly, the specification for the readdir C/C++ library routine (which seems to be the base of the issue) says that it treats a directory as an ordered stream of entries but it does not say anything about what ordering is required or can be assumed! Conversely, it also doesn’t warn that ordering may vary between file systems.
So, programmers who relied on it returning alphabetical order were making an empirical assumption based on observing what it does on most systems. It was certainly arrogant on Apple’s part not to preserve the behavior programmers were known to expect, even though it is technically within the rules!
my components display alphabetically TWICE… it puzzles me to see the list go down to Z and then after, some other components show up starting from A again…
They display twice because you have backup copies (~) in the folder. Components (at least on my system) display based on their Definition name not the file name and the backup has the same definition name…
I edit my components by inserting them in a separate Sketchup document and save them back over the originals rather than editing them directly, that way the backup file never makes it into my Components folder.