Question

Can you help me?

my query is

SELECT num FROM sortnum ORDER BY lpad(num, 10, 0) 

result of this query is not good
here is the result

1 
2 
3 
4 
5 
6 
7 
8 
9 
10 
11 
12 
13 
14 
1a 
2a 
2b 
A1 
A2 
A3 
A4 
B1 
A10 
A11 
B10 

What is the best query for this type of data
i want number first, then data starting with a , then with b

i want result like

1 
1a 
2 
2a 
2b 
3 
4 
5 
6 
7 
8 
9 
10 
11 
12 
13 
14 
A1 
A2 
A3 
A4 
A10 
A11 
B1 
B10 

Thanks in advance

Answer 1

Assuming that any alphabetic prefix will be at most one character in length, you could do:

SELECT   num
FROM     sortnum
ORDER BY
  CAST(num AS UNSIGNED)=0,     -- those starting with numbers before non-numbers
  CAST(num AS UNSIGNED),       -- then by number prefix (if any)
  LEFT(num,1),                 -- then by first character
  CAST(MID(num,2) AS UNSIGNED) -- then by remaining numbers

See it on sqlfiddle.