I am using a set of SQL LIKE conditions to go through the alphabet and list all items beginning with the appropriate letter, e.g. to get all books where the title starts wit
Tested on PostgreSQL 9.5 :
-- only digits
select * from books where title ~ '^[0-9]*$';
or,
select * from books where title SIMILAR TO '[0-9]*';
-- start with digit
select * from books where title ~ '^[0-9]+';