Question

I have a column that is typically only numbers (sometimes it’s letters, but that’s not important).

How can I make it natural sort?

Currently sorts like this: {1,10,11,12,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9}

I want it to sort like this: {1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12}

Answer 1

IsNumeric is “broken”, ISNUMERIC(CHAR(13)) returns 1 and CAST will fail.

Use ISNUMERIC(textval + ‘e0’). Final code:

ORDER BY
  PropertyName,
  CASE ISNUMERIC(MixedField + 'e0') WHEN 1 THEN 0 ELSE 1 END, -- letters after numbers
  CASE ISNUMERIC(MixedField + 'e0') WHEN 1 THEN CAST(MixedField AS INT) ELSE 0 END,
  MixedField

You can mix order parameters…