MySQL sort

[Ruby Tuesday]

Hi, may be some of you MySQL database guru can shed me some lite to do the
following:

I have rows of data in mysql as follow:

CODES
=====
HH-1
....
HH-1000

When I select the CODE column, instead of getting HH-1,HH-2, HH-3....
it prints HH-1xxx first then HH-2xxx ...
It seems it treats them just as text.

How do I sort it and came out what it should be, HH-1, HH-3, ...HH-21,
,HH-22,...,HH-100, HH-101...etc

Or do I have to make sure that it has 4digit with 0's padding e.g
HH-1-> HH-0001, H-2->HH-0002, HH-156-> HH-0156...

If anyone know that there are an easier way without touching/modifying
what's in the database, I'd appreciate the advice. Thanks

[André Næss]

Ruby Tuesday:

Hi, may be some of you MySQL database guru can shed me some lite to do the
following:

I have rows of data in mysql as follow:

CODES
=====
HH-1
...
HH-1000

When I select the CODE column, instead of getting HH-1,HH-2, HH-3....
it prints HH-1xxx first then HH-2xxx ...
It seems it treats them just as text.

How do I sort it and came out what it should be, HH-1, HH-3, ...HH-21,
,HH-22,...,HH-100, HH-101...etc

Or do I have to make sure that it has 4digit with 0's padding e.g
HH-1-> HH-0001, H-2->HH-0002, HH-156-> HH-0156...

If anyone know that there are an easier way without touching/modifying
what's in the database, I'd appreciate the advice. Thanks

There really isn't, as you have reasoned, MySQL treats the data as text. You
must either ensure that the codes contain four digits, or introduce a sort
column, or you can split the codes into two parts, one textual and one
numeric.

André Næss

[David Mackenzie]

On Mon, 16 Feb 2004 01:45:53 -0500, "Ruby Tuesday"
<ru**********@yahoo.com> wrote:

Hi, may be some of you MySQL database guru can shed me some lite to do the
following:

I have rows of data in mysql as follow:

CODES
=====
HH-1
...
HH-1000

When I select the CODE column, instead of getting HH-1,HH-2, HH-3....
it prints HH-1xxx first then HH-2xxx ...
It seems it treats them just as text.

How do I sort it and came out what it should be, HH-1, HH-3, ...HH-21,
,HH-22,...,HH-100, HH-101...etc

Or do I have to make sure that it has 4digit with 0's padding e.g
HH-1-> HH-0001, H-2->HH-0002, HH-156-> HH-0156...

If anyone know that there are an easier way without touching/modifying
what's in the database, I'd appreciate the advice. Thanks

You can hardly be surprised if mySQL treats varchar columns as text!

I had a similar problem when dealing with some legacy data. I used
something akin to:

.... order by cast( (substring(code from 4)) as unsigned )

My database was MS SQL Server, so the above is untested for mySQL. You
can certainly order by substrings, though. It'll be quite slow as that
operation must be performed for every row.

Andre's solutions are proper solutions to the problem, though.

--
David ( @priz.co.uk )