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Re: Sorting numbers on a VARCHAR2 field

From: <oracle4444_at_my-deja.com>
Date: Mon, 06 Nov 2000 14:00:51 GMT
Message-ID: <8u6dif$6pg$1@nnrp1.deja.com>

Actually you can append any character, i think still it works. I didn't play with all posssible characters, but i played with most of the common characters.
I can understand why it is working with regular characters. Because oralce compares the character in each position, and LPADed characters are always same.
I didn't understand how "NULL" is working. Hope someone else can clarify the solution.

In article <3a06988f$0$28900_at_diablo.uninet.ee>,   "Ivar Stolfot" <Ivar.Stolfot_at_mail.ee> wrote:
> <oracle4444_at_my-deja.com> wrote in message
> news:8u57af$ag4$1_at_nnrp1.deja.com...
> > Hi-
> > Try following stmt. It might work.
> > Assuming that column width is 10.......
> > select column1 from table1 order by lpad(column1,10,null);
>
> It works but I can't understand why? LPad('1',10,NULL) returns NULL.
>
> I'm used the following solution for sorting character fields as
 numbers:
> select column1 from table1
> order by Length(column1), column1
>
> It's probably little bit slower.
>
> Iff
>
>

Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy. Received on Mon Nov 06 2000 - 08:00:51 CST

Original text of this message

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