Question: Is there a way to control the order in which files appear in a gist? They don't seem to be alphabetical or chronological. I'd like to have a README.md appear as the first file in [a multi-file gist](https://gist.github.com/Sinetheta/6003037), but no amount of "deleting" a file and re-adding it seems to change anything.

Is there an order to these files that I'm not seeing, or does GitHub maintain an internal filetype priority list?

Answer: 
Since at least 2018, the order is [alphabetical, with periods and numbers coming before letters.](https://github.com/isaacs/github/issues/195)

That is, as mentioned in [Andrew D.Bond](https://stackoverflow.com/users/3442232/andrew-d-bond)'s [answer](https://stackoverflow.com/a/61832468/6309):

1. `$`
2. `.` (dot)
3. Numbers
4. Leading space (although the space doesn't appear after saving, the sort order is still updated)  

(although bis, in Sept. 2020, [IvanaGyro](https://stackoverflow.com/users/6663588/ivanagyro) adds [in the comments](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/17665267/how-do-you-control-the-order-in-which-files-appear-in-a-github-gist/17668995?noredirect=1#comment112988123_17668995) leading spaces will not affect the order any more)
5. `_` (underscore)
6. Letters (case insensitive)

Around 2013-2014 a [different order](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASCIIbetical_order) was used. See [Andrew D. Bond](https://stackoverflow.com/users/3442232/andrew-d-bond)'s [answer](https://stackoverflow.com/a/61832468/6309) for more.
They are ordered automatically by name, following the [ASCII table](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASCII#Printable_characters). 

Unfortunatly, right now, it is not possible to order them by dragging, but there is a trick. You can control the order by adding one or more spaces before the name. The space will not be shown after editing, but the order will change.

E.g: lets say we have 3 files with the automatic order:

* AFile.java
* Readme.md
* SomeFile.txt

We can invert the order by putting spaces like this:

* (space)(space)SomeFile.txt
* (space)Readme.md
* AFile.txt