Comments on: MySQL : ORDER BY numbers

By: Narong

Narong — Sat, 10 Dec 2011 02:46:54 +0000

Thanks for the tutorial!

By: Oslo Hudlege

Oslo Hudlege — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 13:42:55 +0000

thank you so much for solving my issue…

By: muhammed sekertekin

muhammed sekertekin — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 10:34:09 +0000

Thank you very much this helps me a lot. i almost give up with mysql query until i saw this article ….muhammed sekertekin

By: Zno

Zno — Mon, 05 Sep 2011 03:41:10 +0000

hi all
my problem is similar to fictus but unfortunately the “first” number can be 1,2 or 3 digit(s).
how can i sort in right way?

for example:
1mm N52 NEODYM
10mm N52 NEODYM
100mm N52 NEODYM
2mm N52 NEODYM
3mm N52 NEODYM

what i need:
1mm N52 NEODYM
2mm N52 NEODYM
3mm N52 NEODYM
10mm N52 NEODYM
100mm N52 NEODYM

By: nuntius

nuntius — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 19:34:00 +0000

Thanks for the example.

Another way is to use the +0 option (although I understand it is a bit slower), but it sometimes works when ABS() wont. I had an problem where we had been numbering our issues as volume.issue_number.

For example. 1.1 is the first issue of the first volume and 1.10 is the tenth issue of the first volume. The proper way would have been to get them to use .01, but let’s face it… we don’t always thing that way in advance, so I was in a bind! I tried ABS and it didn’t work in this situation for some reason, so I turned to +0.

What I discovered after a lot of research is that you can do something fancy by using the +0 option combined with SUBSTRING_INDEX and ORDER BY to split a field during the query.

SELECT DISTINCT issue FROM tbl_pages
WHERE isActive=1
ORDER BY
(SUBSTRING_INDEX(issue, ‘.’, 1)+0),
(SUBSTRING_INDEX(issue, ‘.’, -1)+0)

This query first orders the issues numerically by the volume number in the field and then orders the issue numerically by issue number. SUBSTRING_INDEX is recognizing the period as a delimiter and
breaking up the column, in order to sort correctly.

Hope this helps someone.

By: bobby

bobby — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 23:02:00 +0000

thx for code

By: Bruno Thomasi

Bruno Thomasi — Fri, 10 Jun 2011 13:28:05 +0000

thx man from Brasil!

By: biotechnology student

biotechnology student — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 08:19:19 +0000

pls tell me how to concatinate two number fields in mysql.

By: Carlos Granier-Phelps

Carlos Granier-Phelps — Tue, 08 Feb 2011 17:43:59 +0000

Thanks! Saved me a ton of research, trial and error – trying to sort numerically on a longtext field. Worked like a charm.

By: fictus

fictus — Tue, 01 Feb 2011 16:04:35 +0000

Wow! This even works on text fields that include numbers and text characters together!

For example, my field was able to sort numbers even when I had values as such:

230-Medium
440-High
110-Low

Thanks for the example!