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

Tim_C_7585 0
Viewed 132151

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 on the front-end for the customer.

When it does contain numbers, I want it to be sorted numerically, e.g. as "1", "2", "10" instead of "1", "10", "2". Fields containing just letters, or letters and numbers (such as 'A1') can be sorted alphabetically as normal. For example, this would be an acceptable sort order.

1
2
10
A
B
B1

What is the best way to achieve this?

tsql sql
12 Answers

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.

Aleris_204170

There are a few possible ways to do this.

One would be

SELECT
 ...
ORDER BY
  CASE 
    WHEN ISNUMERIC(value) = 1 THEN CONVERT(INT, value) 
    ELSE 9999999 -- or something huge
  END,
  value

the first part of the ORDER BY converts everything to an int (with a huge value for non-numerics, to sort last) then the last part takes care of alphabetics.

Note that the performance of this query is probably at least moderately ghastly on large amounts of data.

Cowan_170410 
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.

user_176020 
SELECT *, CONVERT(int, your_column) AS your_column_int
FROM your_table
ORDER BY your_column_int

OR

SELECT *, CAST(your_column AS int) AS your_column_int
FROM your_table
ORDER BY your_column_int

Both are fairly portable I think.

user_2873110

This seems to work: 

select your_column  
from your_table  
order by   
case when isnumeric(your_column) = 1 then your_column else 999999999 end,  
your_column
Corey_Trager_93280

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);

user_90567290

The easiest and efficient way to get the job done is using TRY_CAST

SELECT my_column 
FROM my_table
WHERE <condition>
ORDER BY TRY_CAST(my_column AS NUMERIC) DESC

This will sort all numbers in descending order and push down all non numeric values

user_55533200 
SELECT FIELD FROM TABLE
ORDER BY 
  isnumeric(FIELD) desc, 
  CASE ISNUMERIC(test) 
    WHEN 1 THEN CAST(CAST(test AS MONEY) AS INT)
    ELSE NULL 
  END,
  FIELD

As per this link you need to cast to MONEY then INT to avoid ordering '$' as a number.

user_3640
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