Re: numerical sort on mixed alpha/numeric data

On Wed, Jul 16, 2003 at 11:41:06 -0500, Bruno Wolff III <bruno@wolff.to> wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 16, 2003 at 12:48:26 +0100,
>   Gary Stainburn <gary.stainburn@ringways.co.uk> wrote:
> > Hi folks,
> > 
> > I've got a table holding loco numbers and an id which references the locos 
> > table. How can I sort this table, so that numeric values appear first in 
> > numerical order followed by alpha in alpha order.?
> 
> You can first sort by whether or not a pattern match succeeds. You haven't
> said whether or not the empty string is a number or an alpha and that will
> affect the choice of pattern.
> 
> For example:
> select * from lumbers order by lumber !~ '^[0-9]+$', lumber;

I missed the need for numeric ordering for the numbers. The CASE solution
someone else suggested seems to answer your question though.