Sort string as number in sql server

Question

I have a column that contains data like this. dashes indicate multi copies of the same invoice and these have to be sorted in ascending order

790711
790109-1         


        

Answer 1

Plenty of good answers here, but I think this one might be the most compact order by clause that is effective:

SELECT *
FROM Invoice
ORDER BY LEFT(InvoiceId,CHARINDEX('-',InvoiceId+'-'))
         ,CAST(RIGHT(InvoiceId,CHARINDEX('-',REVERSE(InvoiceId)+'-'))AS INT)DESC

Demo: - SQL Fiddle

Note, I added the '790709' version to my test, since some of the methods listed here aren't treating the no-suffix version as lesser than the with-suffix versions.

If your invoiceID varies in length, before the '-' that is, then you'd need:

SELECT *
FROM Invoice
ORDER BY CAST(LEFT(list,CHARINDEX('-',list+'-')-1)AS INT)
         ,CAST(RIGHT(InvoiceId,CHARINDEX('-',REVERSE(InvoiceId)+'-'))AS INT)DESC

Demo with varying lengths before the dash: SQL Fiddle