On Wed, Jul 16, 2003 at 12:48:26 +0100,
Gary Stainburn <gary(dot)stainburn(at)ringways(dot)co(dot)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;