How to sort varchar column ?

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I have a table like this:

XML

and the type of col2 is varchar, when I do order by col2 default,the result like this:

XML

col2
1
10
1a
2
a-1
a-2

but I want it like this:

XML

col2
1
1a
2
10
a-1
a-2

I don't want to do it using user-defined function.
help me!

Posted 23-Jun-10 23:36pm

ilovepesx

Updated 23-Jun-10 23:46pm

Sandeep Mewara

v2

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Kschuler 24-Jun-10 16:49pm

I don't know if this will help (which is why I made this a comment instead of an answer) but you might want to research the PATINDEX
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms188395.aspx

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Jörgen Andersson · Accepted Answer · 2010-06-29T04:49:00

What you want is a natural sort.
It isn't supported by any db that I'm aware of.

The reason for this is that most indexing of databases uses B-Tree index where B stands for Binary. Sorting uses the index.
So natural sorting would need a full table scan which in many cases would be a serious performance hit.

Here[^] is an article on how to implement natural sorting using C#.