Question

I have fields in the column that look like so:

2/8B, 3, 3/8B, 4/8B, 2, 6, 4/9, 9, 8/9, 8, 7, 1, 5/9, 10, 3/9, 2/9, 7/9, 6/8B, 6/9, 1/9, 5, 8B, 5/8B, 4

I need to sort this list in a manner like:

1, 1/9, 2, 2/8B, 2/9, 3, 3/8B, 3/9, 4, 4/8B, 4/9, 5, 5/8B, 5/9, 6, 6/8B, 6/9, 7, 7/9, 8, 8/9, 8B, 9, 10

How do I Order By to create this output?

To clear up any confusion (1/2) is not a fraction. the “/” is just a separator.

Answer 1

I don’t get it; using the characters you’ve provided DOES sort in the order you requested. Give it a shot:

SELECT Test
FROM (
    SELECT '38a' AS Test
    UNION
    SELECT '1'
    UNION 
    SELECT '1/2'
    UNION
    SELECT '12'
) MyData
ORDER BY Test ASC

EDIT

Now that you’ve given concrete examples, I see it was the 10 and 8B that were throwing things off. Try this instead:

SELECT YourCol
FROM YourTable
ORDER BY CAST(REPLACE(REPLACE(REPLACE(YourCol, 'B', '.99'), '/', '.'), 
    '.8.99', '.899') AS NUMERIC(18, 4))

This will order it as:

1, 1/9, 2, 2/8B, 2/9, 3, 3/8B, 3/9, 4, 4/8B, 4/9, 5, 5/8B, 5/9, 6, 6/8B, 6/9, 7, 7/9, 8, 8/9, 8B, 9, 10

It’s ugly, but it works. If you have other letters besides B, the script will have to be changed to handle that.