How do I sort a VARCHAR column in SQL server that contains numbers?

Question

I have a VARCHAR column in a SQL Server 2000 database that can contain either letters or numbers. It depends on how the application is configured o

Answer 1

 SELECT *,
       ROW_NUMBER()OVER(ORDER BY CASE WHEN ISNUMERIC (ID)=1 THEN CONVERT(NUMERIC(20,2),SUBSTRING(Id, PATINDEX('%[0-9]%', Id), LEN(Id)))END DESC)Rn ---- numerical
        FROM
            (

        SELECT '1'Id UNION ALL
        SELECT '25.20' Id UNION ALL

    SELECT 'A115' Id UNION ALL
    SELECT '2541' Id UNION ALL
    SELECT '571.50' Id UNION ALL
    SELECT '67' Id UNION ALL
    SELECT 'B48' Id UNION ALL
    SELECT '500' Id UNION ALL
    SELECT '147.54' Id UNION ALL
    SELECT 'A-100' Id
    )A

    ORDER BY 
    CASE WHEN ISNUMERIC (ID)=0                                /* alphabetical sort */ 
         THEN CASE WHEN PATINDEX('%[0-9]%', Id)=0
                   THEN LEFT(Id,PATINDEX('%[0-9]%',Id))
                   ELSE LEFT(Id,PATINDEX('%[0-9]%',Id)-1)
              END
    END DESC

Answer 2

This may help you, I have tried this when i got the same issue.

SELECT * FROM tab ORDER BY IIF(TRY_CAST(val AS INT) IS NULL, 1, 0),TRY_CAST(val AS INT);

Answer 3

One possible solution is to pad the numeric values with a character in front so that all are of the same string length.

Here is an example using that approach:

select MyColumn
from MyTable
order by 
    case IsNumeric(MyColumn) 
        when 1 then Replicate('0', 100 - Len(MyColumn)) + MyColumn
        else MyColumn
    end

The 100 should be replaced with the actual length of that column.

Answer 4

select
  Field1, Field2...
from
  Table1
order by
  isnumeric(Field1) desc,
  case when isnumeric(Field1) = 1 then cast(Field1 as int) else null end,
  Field1

This will return values in the order you gave in your question.

Performance won't be too great with all that casting going on, so another approach is to add another column to the table in which you store an integer copy of the data and then sort by that first and then the column in question. This will obviously require some changes to the logic that inserts or updates data in the table, to populate both columns. Either that, or put a trigger on the table to populate the second column whenever data is inserted or updated.

Answer 5

you can always convert your varchar-column to bigint as integer might be too short...

select cast([yourvarchar] as BIGINT)

but you should always care for alpha characters

where ISNUMERIC([yourvarchar] +'e0') = 1

the +'e0' comes from http://blogs.lessthandot.com/index.php/DataMgmt/DataDesign/isnumeric-isint-isnumber

this would lead to your statement

SELECT
  *
FROM
  Table
ORDER BY
   ISNUMERIC([yourvarchar] +'e0') DESC
 , LEN([yourvarchar]) ASC

the first sorting column will put numeric on top. the second sorts by length, so 10 will preceed 0001 (which is stupid?!)

this leads to the second version:

SELECT
      *
    FROM
      Table
    ORDER BY
       ISNUMERIC([yourvarchar] +'e0') DESC
     , RIGHT('00000000000000000000'+[yourvarchar], 20) ASC

the second column now gets right padded with '0', so natural sorting puts integers with leading zeros (0,01,10,0100...) in correct order (correct!) - but all alphas would be enhanced with '0'-chars (performance)

so third version:

 SELECT
          *
        FROM
          Table
        ORDER BY
           ISNUMERIC([yourvarchar] +'e0') DESC
         , CASE WHEN ISNUMERIC([yourvarchar] +'e0') = 1
                THEN RIGHT('00000000000000000000' + [yourvarchar], 20) ASC
                ELSE LTRIM(RTRIM([yourvarchar]))
           END ASC

now numbers first get padded with '0'-chars (of course, the length 20 could be enhanced) - which sorts numbers right - and alphas only get trimmed