Sorting - numbers first and then the alphabets ?

Question

Hi,
I have a list of names
starting with space, starting with numbers and some starting with upper case and then some starting with lower case letters.
The default order by sorts is - spaces, numbers, upper case alphabets and lower case alphabets.
But I want to order the names by spaces first, lower case alphabets, upper case alphabets and then the numbers.
How do i do this? Any help is appreciated.
thanks

Answer 1

Hi,
So you have 62 characters (10 digits, 26 capital letters and 26 small letters) that are now being sorted in one order, but you want them sorted in another order.
ORDER BY a TRANSLATEd version of the string:
SELECT     name
FROM     table_x
ORDER BY     TRANSLATE
     ( name
     , 'abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ0123456789'
     , '0123456789ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz'
     );Notice that the 2nd argument to TRANSLATE has the 62 characters in the desired order.
The 3rd argument has the same 62 characters in the default sort order, that is, the order in which they will be sorted.
That is:
'a' will now be sorted as if it were '0', the very first of the 62
'b' will now be sorted as if it were '1', the second of the 62
'9' will now be sorted as if it were 'z', the last of the 62