RE : Re: group by sorting

Eric,

  I presume that using

    translate( ...,
'ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz',                    

'ZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBAzyxwvutsrqponmkljihgfedcba')

 could be considered as the character equivalent of -1 *, but you'd rather define the column as 'noprint' because it's ugly :-). And quite obviously it does nothing for NLS characters, all those é, ò, ñ, ä and ø which many European countries delight in (and I am only referring to the Latin alphabet) - but you can adapt the 'translate' to handle those too.

-- 
Regards,

  Stephane Faroult
  email: sfaroult_at_oriolecorp.com 
  Oriole Corporation
  Voice:  +44  (0) 7050-696-269 
  Fax:    +44  (0) 7050-696-449 
  Performance Tools & Free Scripts
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> 

> Cool!

> 

> How do you get the inverse of other non-numeric fields?

> 

> thanks,

> ep

> 

> 

> On 18 Oct 2000, at 6:20, Rod Corderey wrote:

> 

> Date sent:              Wed, 18 Oct 2000 06:20:56 -0800

> To:                     Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L

> <ORACLE-L_at_fatcity.com>

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> 

> > As others have said , you can simply add an order by after the group by.

> > 

> > Unless the group by is part of an inner query or inline view. In that

> case an order 

> > by is not allowed. 

> > 

> > The way to overcome this is to group by the necessary columns to satisfy

> the group 

> > functions but then add an overriding value to your group by to which you

> can apply 

> > a factor of -1,

> > 

> > eg 

> > presuming that invoice_no is numeric

> > 

> > then group by invoice_no, invoice_date

> > 

> > becomes group by invoice_no*-1, to_number(to_char(invoice_date,'J')) * -1

> > 

> > or something similar.

> >