Natural sort for SQL Server?
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01-10-2019 - |
Question
I have a column that is typically only numbers (sometimes it's letters, but that's not important).
How can I make it natural sort?
Currently sorts like this: {1,10,11,12,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9}
I want it to sort like this: {1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12}
Solution
IsNumeric is "broken", ISNUMERIC(CHAR(13)) returns 1 and CAST will fail.
Use ISNUMERIC(textval + 'e0'). Final code:
ORDER BY
PropertyName,
CASE ISNUMERIC(MixedField + 'e0') WHEN 1 THEN 0 ELSE 1 END, -- letters after numbers
CASE ISNUMERIC(MixedField + 'e0') WHEN 1 THEN CAST(MixedField AS INT) ELSE 0 END,
MixedField
You can mix order parameters...
OTHER TIPS
Cast it. Also, don't forget to use IsNumeric to make sure you only get the numbers back (if they include letters it IS important ;).
SELECT textval FROM tablename
WHERE IsNumeric(textval) = 1
ORDER BY CAST(textval as int)
Also, cast to the datatype that will hold the largest value.
If you need the non-numbers in the result set too then just append a UNION query where IsNumeric = 0 (order by whatever you want) either before or after.
Have you tied using:
'OrderBy ColumnName Asc'
at the end of your query.