• Lynn Pettis (1/15/2013)


    Lynn Pettis (1/15/2013)


    Can't believe I missed such an easy solution. I guess that's what I get for making things harder than the need to be at first.

    Except, I don't think it works.

    WITH SampleData (BipolarNumbers) AS (

    SELECT '1'

    UNION ALL SELECT '100231-A'

    UNION ALL SELECT '1003'

    UNION ALL SELECT '11'

    UNION ALL SELECT '11342'

    UNION ALL SELECT '11342-A'

    UNION ALL SELECT '12')

    SELECT BipolarNumbers

    FROM SampleData

    ORDER BY CAST(LEFT(BipolarNumbers

    ,CASE PATINDEX('%[^0-9]%', BipolarNumbers)

    WHEN 0 THEN LEN(BipolarNumbers)

    ELSE PATINDEX('%[^0-9]%', BipolarNumbers) - 1 END) AS INT);

    WITH SampleData (BipolarNumbers) AS (

    SELECT '1'

    UNION ALL SELECT '100231-A'

    UNION ALL SELECT '1003'

    UNION ALL SELECT '11'

    UNION ALL SELECT '11342'

    UNION ALL SELECT '11342-A'

    UNION ALL SELECT '11342-B'

    UNION ALL SELECT '12')

    SELECT BipolarNumbers

    FROM SampleData

    ORDER BY CAST(LEFT(BipolarNumbers

    ,CASE PATINDEX('%[^0-9]%', BipolarNumbers)

    WHEN 0 THEN LEN(BipolarNumbers)

    ELSE PATINDEX('%[^0-9]%', BipolarNumbers) - 1 END) AS INT)

    ,PATINDEX('%[^0-9]%', BipolarNumbers)

    This is what I get as a result:

    BipolarNumbers

    1

    11

    12

    1003

    11342

    11342-B

    11342-A

    100231-A

    Picky! Picky!

    How about something simpler then?

    WITH SampleData (BipolarNumbers) AS (

    SELECT '1'

    UNION ALL SELECT '100231-A'

    UNION ALL SELECT '1003'

    UNION ALL SELECT '11'

    UNION ALL SELECT '11342'

    UNION ALL SELECT '11342-A'

    UNION ALL SELECT '11342-B'

    UNION ALL SELECT '12')

    SELECT BipolarNumbers

    FROM SampleData

    ORDER BY CAST(LEFT(BipolarNumbers

    ,CASE PATINDEX('%[^0-9]%', BipolarNumbers)

    WHEN 0 THEN LEN(BipolarNumbers)

    ELSE PATINDEX('%[^0-9]%', BipolarNumbers) - 1 END) AS INT)

    ,BipolarNumbers


    My mantra: No loops! No CURSORs! No RBAR! Hoo-uh![/I]

    My thought question: Have you ever been told that your query runs too fast?

    My advice:
    INDEXing a poor-performing query is like putting sugar on cat food. Yeah, it probably tastes better but are you sure you want to eat it?
    The path of least resistance can be a slippery slope. Take care that fixing your fixes of fixes doesn't snowball and end up costing you more than fixing the root cause would have in the first place.

    Need to UNPIVOT? Why not CROSS APPLY VALUES instead?[/url]
    Since random numbers are too important to be left to chance, let's generate some![/url]
    Learn to understand recursive CTEs by example.[/url]
    [url url=http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/St