Custom Order By...Revisited

Hi

I would like to return rows in a custom order, similar to this post. However, in my case I do not have a fixed number of 'sort by' items. The order I would like to have returned from Col2 is:

'A' Numeric Values in numeric order 0-99 All other alpha values

For example:
'A', '0', '1', '3', '65', 'MyValue1', 'MyValue2'

How could I achieve this?

thanks

Richard

Here You Go...

Code Snippet

Create Table #sorttest (

[Col2] Varchar(100)

);

Insert Into #sorttest Values('A');

Insert Into #sorttest Values('12');

Insert Into #sorttest Values('1');

Insert Into #sorttest Values('3');

Insert Into #sorttest Values('5');

Insert Into #sorttest Values('6');

Insert Into #sorttest Values('78');

Insert Into #sorttest Values('100');

Insert Into #sorttest Values('MyValue1');

Insert Into #sorttest Values('MyValue3');

Insert Into #sorttest Values('MyValue2');

Select

*

From

#sorttest

Order By

Case When Col2 Like '[A-Z]' Then 1

When Isnumeric(Col2)=1 Then 2

Else 3 End,

Case When Isnumeric(Col2)=1 Then Convert(float,Col2) End,

Col2

/*

::Output

Col2

-

A

1

3

5

6

12

78

100

MyValue1

MyValue2

MyValue3

*/

|||hi, try this

SELECT MyMixedField
FROM MyTable
WHERE PATINDEX('%[0-9]%', MyMixedField) = 0
UNION ALL
SELECT MyMixedField
FROM MyTable
WHERE ISNUMERIC(MyMixedField) = 1
UNION ALL
SELECT MyMixedField
FROM MyTable
WHERE PATINDEX('%[0-9]%', MyMixedField) > 0
and ISNUMERIC(MyMixedField) <> 1|||i think manivannan's solution is much better,

@.manivannan..

it think its better to use patindex('%[0-9]%', col2) = 0 for alpha valued records

Order By

Case When patindex('%[0-9]%', col2) = 0 Then 1

When Isnumeric(Col2)=1 Then 2

Else 3 End,

Case When Isnumeric(Col2)=1 Then Convert(float,Col2) End,

Col2|||thank you both very much for your quick and accurate responses!

Works perfectly
|||

It seems that manivannan's suggested use of

Like '[A-Z]'

is most likely the best option to sort on single letter alpha. Don't you think that the

patindex('%[0-9]%', col2) = 0

suggestion 'might' include things like an asterisk, period, @. symbol, $ symbol, etc.? (-As well as allowing multi-character alpha entries on the first sort level...)

However, I would caution that using manivannan's suggestion to use isnumeric() 'could' cause problems. For example, the following evaluates to TRUE

SELECT isnumeric( '$' )

But is it a number? Should it sort with the alphas?

|||Hi

Good point, but actually in this case we don't allow non-alphanumeric characters in this field, so it's not really an issue!

thanks everyone for help on this