Order Numbers of VARCHAR2 Type

Question

Hey, what I need to do is order columns filled with VARCHAR2 Datatypes by number. The problem is, the numbers are index values and are such that they cannot be converted into numbers. The numbers that need to be sorted are numbers like '10.8.1.9'. Is it possible to sort these rows in numerical order?

Answer 1

SQL> ed
Wrote file afiedt.buf
  1  WITH t as (select '4.10.5.11' as idx from dual union all
  2             select '5.1.4.13' from dual union all
  3             select '1.2.3.4' from dual)
  4  -- END OF TEST DATA
  5  SELECT idx
  6  from t
  7  order by (regexp_replace(idx, '^([0-9]*)\.[[:print:]]*$', '\1') * 1000000) +
  8        (regexp_replace(idx, '^([0-9]*)\.([0-9]*)\.[[:print:]]*$', '\2') * 10000) +
  9        (regexp_replace(idx, '^([0-9]*\.){2}([0-9]*)\.[[:print:]]*$', '\2') * 100) +
10*       regexp_replace(idx, '^([0-9]*\.){3}([0-9]*)$', '\2')
SQL> /
IDX
1.2.3.4
4.10.5.11
5.1.4.13
SQL>