Re: numerical sort on mixed alpha/numeric data

On Wed, Jul 16, 2003 at 11:41:06 -0500,
Bruno Wolff III <bruno(at)wolff(dot)to> wrote:
> 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;

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