title: Directory.EnumerateFiles read order
body: <p>What is the default read order for the <code>Directory.EnumerateFiles</code> method? Is it consistent?</p>
  
  <p>In my experience so far it seems to be by the date the files were created but I haven't been able to find confirmation of this.</p>
  
  <p>Reason I ask is because part of a program I am working on loads binary files from directories into objects which are in turn loaded into arrays. These objects reference each other by arrays of indices, meaning the order they are loaded into their arrays needs to remain consistent (to avoid shifting indices).</p>
  
  <p>While I'm here, I have another minor question. When files are deleted, it obviously changes the indices of the files loaded into arrays no matter what I do. Any suggestions for avoiding this problem? I've avoided using a dictionary up until now due to worries about storage (would rather not be storing arrays of textual keys if I can avoid it) but if it's the only feasible approach, I may have to implement it anyway.</p>
  
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  <p><strong>EDIT:</strong> After the excellent tips from your answers, I've refactored to a dictionary approach using the names of the files. The performance impact has been fairly negligible and the readability and maintainability are both vastly improved so it's worked out quite well.</p>