what does "C=M;O=D" mean?

[pal]

I've seen this string - "C=M;O=D" - appended to many URLs which are browsable. what does that signify? coz I've seen other browsable URLs which don't have this appended to them..
[btw, by browsable I mean their directory contents are visible]

[pal]

k.. this's kinda weird coz I posted the question and now I'm posting the answer too

took a while to figure this out.

"C=M;O=D" is the query string passed in to the URLs that are browsable. it's used to sort the files list.
O is the sort order, which can either be A or D for ascending and descending respectively.
C is for column name which's to be sorted. It can take the following values:
N - Name (file name) column
M - Last Modified column
S - Size column
D - might be for Description, but havent tried it

for example:
http://somesite/folder/?C=N;O=A
would return the files list sorted by their file names in ascending order

not sure if C and O take other values.
neither do I know if this's server specific.
I'd be glad if someone could clarify that.

[killerpants]

Those are basically parameters sent to the server as part of your query (which you found on your own). Those are website-specific parameter names (C and O), so I guess you see them often either because they are convention or because those websites' creators used a similar program to build the websites. I'm not entirely sure, but another reason you see them often might be because usually when a user queries for columns, the server is passing the query to some database, usually in SQL syntax. That C=M and O=A stuff might just correspond with the SQL command to sort the database query results, which would make coding the interface between the server and the database somewhat easier. I hope this helped, and I hope it's not erroneous. I don't know for sure about the SQL stuff, but the first part should be right!

[amitpatel_3001]

Well i was always confused about these now understood them :P
Thanks