Comments on: SQL SERVER – Order By Numeric Values Formatted as String

By: Sanjay Monpara

Sanjay Monpara — Tue, 30 Oct 2012 13:06:21 +0000

If you want result in numeric order then you can use this code,
SELECT ID,
LEFT(Col1,PATINDEX(‘%[^0-9]%’,Col1)-1) ‘Numeric Character’,
Col1 ‘Original Character’
FROM MyTable
ORDER BY cast(LEFT(Col1,PATINDEX(‘%[^0-9]%’,Col1)-1) as int)
GO

ID Numeric Character Original Character
1 1 1one
3 2 2two
2 11 11eleven
4 22 22twentytwo
5 111 111oneeleven

By: pareshpatelsql

pareshpatelsql — Fri, 26 Oct 2012 07:16:03 +0000

Very Good

By: pareshpatelsql

pareshpatelsql — Fri, 26 Oct 2012 07:15:21 +0000

Very Good.

By: Coolmind

Coolmind — Tue, 23 Oct 2012 21:27:17 +0000

Order by Numeric Values formatted as string, then the correct order shouldn’t be like this?

SELECT ID,
Col1 ‘Original Character’
FROM MyTable
ORDER BY CAST(LEFT(Col1,PATINDEX(‘%[^0-9]%’,Col1)-1) AS INT)
GO

By: SHRI

SHRI — Tue, 23 Oct 2012 20:10:24 +0000

how to use this function if the number is between the string
Ex: NSE-USD-3Y-SB-OP

….

By: Harsh

Harsh — Tue, 23 Oct 2012 07:34:38 +0000

Thanks,
Both solutions will work if string has first part as an int and later part as string.
Minor addition in these scripts can handle strings only has int part(no alphabet characters).
So, One of two limitations will be removed

SELECT ID,
Col1 ‘Original Character’
FROM MyTable
ORDER BY LEFT(Col1,PATINDEX(‘%[^0-9]%’,Col1+’a')-1)

SELECT ID, Col1 ‘Original Character’ FROM MyTable ORDER BY UNICODE(Col1), PATINDEX(‘%[^0-9]%’, Col1+’a'), Col1

By: Eduard Uta

Eduard Uta — Tue, 23 Oct 2012 07:28:00 +0000

Hi,

I also have an alternate solution for your “challenge”:

select ID, Col1 as Original_String, SUBSTRING(Col1, 0, PATINDEX(‘%[a-z]%’, Col1)) as Numeric_Character
from MyTable
order by Numeric_Character

I think it is quite elegant…. SUBSTRING(Col1, 0, PATINDEX(‘%[a-z]%’, Col1))… SUBSTRING returns character data if expr (Col1) is character type (our case here) so the result is ok…

You are doing a great job here!

Thanks,
Eduard U.

By: pinaldave

pinaldave — Tue, 23 Oct 2012 06:11:20 +0000

Super Nice Harsh!

By: Harsh

Harsh — Tue, 23 Oct 2012 06:01:12 +0000

Alternate solution:

SELECT ID, Col1 ‘Original Character’ FROM MyTable ORDER BY UNICODE(Col1), PATINDEX(‘%[^0-9]%’, Col1), Col1

By: Virat Kotharivi

Virat Kotharivi — Tue, 23 Oct 2012 02:50:19 +0000

Superb article. Solution to real time scenario.

By: paul.k

paul.k — Tue, 23 Oct 2012 02:33:14 +0000

instead of substring and order it in smaller piece, how about concatenate it and order in bigger one?
consider:

select * from mytable order by right(’00000′ + mycol,10)