The issue with sorting, re: upper/lower case characters, is likely to be a locale issue. IIRC, only the ``C'' locale, which is pretty much just ASCII, sorts all upper case before the lower case characters. If your locale is ``en_US'', for example, you'll see that your sorts will start mixing upper and lower cases together. Your i18n implementation may vary, though. Regardless, Java has made a point of i18n compliance, and I don't think they have anything equivalent to the plain ``C'' locale.

Edit: For example, start up a Korn-type shell (ksh, zsh, bash) and run:

LC_ALL=en_US ls

in a directory that has files that start with both upper and lower case characters, and you'll see it sort differently. BTW, it bothers me, too. Too many years of expecting it the old way, which is really incorrect.