Help on expression compare in Oracle

Hi to all newsgroup !!!
Sorry for my bad english...

I have a table with this values returned by Sql*Plus:

SQL> select * from test order by 1;

CHIAVE DESCR
-------------------- ------------------------------

A1                   desc1
A2                   desc2
A3                   desc3
0100                 desc4
0101                 desc5
0200                 desc6

And I have this strange situation:

SQL> select * from test where chiave < '0100';

no rows selected

SQL> select * from test where chiave > '0100';

CHIAVE DESCR
-------------------- ------------------------------

A1                   desc1
A2                   desc2
A3                   desc3
0101                 desc5
0200                 desc6

If I decide to order by CHIAVE, why Oracle considers 'A1' lesser than '0100', but when I select values where chiave < '0100', it return no rows ???

Please, help me...

Bye,

       *Roby* Received on Mon Jan 20 2003 - 07:28:04 CST