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
2581
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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