> This works, but it looks kind of ugly

Maybe I'm weird but I prefer the way zero padding looks :)

I personally think the misalignment of lines where the numbers have different lengths looks (a lot) uglier than having zero padding. Sometimes it even throws _me_ off because the numbers have different lengths and ... well it just doesn't look sorted to me! :)

So the bonus of zero padding is that it'll be sorted correctly even if the file manager tries to be "smart" and sort incorrectly.