I need MySQL to store numbers in a integer field and maintain leading zeros. I cannot use the zerofill option as my current field is Bigint(16) and numbers can vary in amount of leading zeros. IE: 0001 - 0005, then 008 - 010 may need to be stored. I am not concerned about uniqueness of numbers (these aren't being used as IDs or anything) but I still need them to be stored preferably as INTS.
The issue using CHAR/VARCHAR and then typecasting the values as integers in PHP means that sorting results via queries leads to alphanumeric sorting, IE: SORT BY number ASC would produce
001
002
003
1
100
101
102
2
Clearly not in numerical order, but in alphanumeric order, which isn't wanted.
Hoping for some clever workarounds :)