David,
Daniel is exactly right. In general, it is not a good idea to try to cram two pieces of data into one column. Your questions at the end of your post are good examples of why you don't do it that way. With a population column and a separate population_note column, you can easily answer those questions. The population column is an integer column which only contains integers. If you don't want to show the notes, simply select and display the population values. If you do want to display the notes, then you select them as well. Once selected, you can display them as you see fit: an extra "note" column in table form, with superscripts which refer to footnotes, etc.
If you try to put both in the same column, you won't have integers anymore, which will screw up sorting by population, will require note-stripping code when you don't want to display them, difficulty finding which rows have notes and which don't, and so on.
In general, if it answers a different question, it goes in a separate column.
Michael
Daniel Clark wrote:
One simple option would be to add a footnote column. And add in your code, if footnote column is NOT NULL then add a * on to population and show footnote at the bottom.
population footnote 100 null 200* yada yada
Suppose I have several columns of numerals - area, popoulation, etc. - and I want to include asterisks and footnotes, as in below:
200 4200 258* 234
24 258<superscript>1</superscsript> 2400
What are some good strategies for doing this? You really aren't supposed to include asterisks in integer columns, right?
It would also be nice to have a strategy that would give you the option of masking asterisks and footnotes when you don't want them displayed.
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