Is there a better answer than making sure the mixed keys have enough leading zeros in the numeric sub-field to suppress the string comparison effect?
ergo (if you know you will never have ten thousand records): XY-0001-BLAH XY-0002-BLAH XY-0003-BLAH XY-0004-BLAH XY-0005-BLAH XY-0006-BLAH XY-0007-BLAH XY-0008-BLAH XY-0009-BLAH XY-0010-BLAH XY-0011-BLAH XY-0012-BLAH XY-0013-BLAH is the orthodox approach, and should work. But if there were some way to count off the number of lead non-numeric characters and let the comparison function soft-parse the numeric sub-field, Chris's semi-numeric keys should work. Or, providing some way to escape from the standard comparison function to a custom function should also work. Squeezing the syntax for this kind of custom key comparison into SQL might not be easy. I didn't see any evidence of custom comparisons in a quick search of the manual ... Chris Aitken" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> asked: > > Hi All, > > Ive been searching the archives and the documentation but dont really know > the terminology im looking for, or even if its do-able or not so I figure I > would just ask here instead...... > > I have a list of records in a table, and one of the fields is alpha > numeric. They look like this....... > > XY-1-BLAH > XY-2-BLAH > XY-3-BLAH > XY-4-BLAH > XY-5-BLAH > XY-6-BLAH > XY-7-BLAH > XY-8-BLAH > XY-9-BLAH > XY-10-BLAH > XY-11-BLAH > XY-12-BLAH > XY-13-BLAH > [snipped] Joel Rees [EMAIL PROTECTED] --------------------------------------------------------------------- Before posting, please check: http://www.mysql.com/manual.php (the manual) http://lists.mysql.com/ (the list archive) To request this thread, e-mail <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To unsubscribe, e-mail <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Trouble unsubscribing? Try: http://lists.mysql.com/php/unsubscribe.php
