hi all

an Interesting question

I have a column which stores a versin number in this format

1.5.5.19
1.5.5.9
...
...

I want to be able to sort this text column in an ascending order. Unfortunately it gives me 1.5.5.19 followed by 1.5.5.9 which is not the case.

Please let me know ASAP

Krish+

This is an age old question, caused mostly by the unstructured format of the version numbers.

The simple answer is to make each of the "units" in the version number zero filled to some arbitrary width, so that your numbers would become 01.05.05.09 or something like that. This makes the numbers sortable as strings.

Another solution would be to change the storage from character to some form of binary. This would allow the version numbers to be sorted arbitrarily.

You have to figure out what solution works best for your problem.

-PatP

you can check the next tip also

http://dev.mysql.com/doc/mysql/en/Sorting_rows.html
on the comments sections is your answer