What I see doesn’t match this description
tell application "Finder"
set theItems to every item in window 1 as alias list -- correctly return a list of aliases
set theItems2 to (sort theItems by name) -- as alias list -- with or without the coercion, return a list of Finder's references
end tell
return {theItems, linefeed, linefeed, theItems2}
(*
{{alias "…:Doc 2.numbers", alias "…:doc 01.numbers", alias "…:doc 02.numbers", alias "…:doc 04.numbers", alias "…:doc 1.numbers", alias "…:doc 2 .numbers", alias "…:doc 20.numbers", alias "…:doc 3.numbers", alias "…:doc 30.numbers", alias "…:doc 4.numbers"}, "
", "
", {document file "doc 1.numbers" of folder …, document file "doc 01.numbers" of folder …, document file "doc 2 .numbers" of folder …, document file "doc 02.numbers" of folder …, document file "Doc 2.numbers" of folder …, document file "doc 3.numbers" of folder …, document file "doc 4.numbers" of folder …, document file "doc 04.numbers" of folder …, document file "doc 20.numbers" of folder …, document file "doc 30.numbers" of folder …}}
*)
(*
In the window sorted by name the list is
{"doc 1.numbers", "doc 01.numbers", "doc 2 .numbers", "doc 02.numbers", "Doc 2.numbers", "doc 3.numbers", "doc 4.numbers", "doc 04.numbers", "doc 20.numbers", "doc 30.numbers"}
*)
As far as I know, if the numerical components were treated lexically, I would get
{“doc 01.numbers”, “doc 02.numbers”, “doc 04.numbers”, “doc 1.numbers”, “doc 2 .numbers”, “Doc 2.numbers”, “doc 20.numbers”, “doc 3.numbers”, “doc 30.numbers”"
“doc 4.numbers”}
Yvan KOENIG running High Sierra 10.13.6 in French (VALLAURIS, France) lundi 4 mai 2020 19:16:30