select sql data order by date

Question

I have a table with a column called date, as a varchar. The contents are specifically formatted like \'March 11, 2011\'.

How can I select the results have

Answer 1

I'm blindly assuming MySQL here, because it makes sense in the context of this question. Nobody using another database engine would dare create this problem in the first place.

STR_TO_DATE to the rescue! Given the format "March 01, 2000", the following conversion should work.

SELECT STR_TO_DATE(column_name, '%M %d, %Y')
  FROM TableName
 WHERE ...
 ORDER BY STR_TO_DATE(column_name, '%M %d, %Y')

You may need to adjust the format string a bit.