Order by Characters not Numbers

Question

Hello,
I need help with an order by for data like below:
select distinct First_Name
from Name
First_Name
12345 Test
25825 Apple
14782 Bob
1452 JamesI need to be able to sort ascending by just the characters
not the numbers but the numbers are included in field value.
select distinct First_Name
from Name
order by First_Name ascshould display this
25825 Apple
14782 Bob
1452 James
12345 Testbut it will order by numbers first
1452 James
12345 Test
14782 Bob
25825 AppleIs there any logic so the characters order by ascending
and the numbers are ignored when doing the order by?
The number will not always have a length of 5 or 3, it varies.
Thanks for reading!!

Answer 1

Hi,
You can ORDER BY a copy of the name that has all the digits removed, like this:
SELECT    first_name
FROM       name
GROUP BY  first_name
ORDER BY  LTRIM ( TRANSLATE ( first_name
                             , 'A0123456789'
                   , 'A'
;LTRIM removes any spaces that may occur at the beginning of the string after the digits are removed. Spaces that occur elsewhere are not touched.
I hope this answers your question.
If not, post a little sample data (CREATE TABLE and INSERT statements, relevant columns only), and also post the results you want from that data.
Explain, using specific examples, how you get those results from that data.
Always say which version of Oracle you're using.
Edited by: Frank Kulash on Jun 16, 2011 10:37 AM
If you can't do SELECT DISTINCT and then ORDER BY something that's not in the SELECT clause, use GROUP BY instead of SELECT DISTINCT.