Sort on alpha field.

[bmwisme]

Without adding an additional field to the schema of our Syteline (5.0.20) ERP application (Progress 9.1a), I would like to sort a table (item master) by the character field (item). Management would like to pad the field with preceeding zeros to get the sort to their liking - I am fighting tooth and nail!

Current sort order:
4111
411

Pad with zeros will produce (don't want to do):
0411
4111

Does anyone know if I can use the RECNO to sort my queries? I control the item number entry so 411 would always be before 4111.

Thanks in advance...

Bill

 

[mra]

I'm not shure if this is what you're after, but!!!


If you're that the field will only contain integers, why not sort by integer( <field> )?

Regards
Mike

 

[bmwisme]

Sort on Alpha...

The item number will be alpha/numeric. I have sorted on character fields in FoxPro but Progress seems to lack the necessary functions to handle the mixture of letters and numbers.

Bill

 

[mra]

If you mean, sorting an alphabetic field numericly then yes. How about creating a temporary table with a sort-field. Fill the fields using 4GL, and then sort by sort-field.

You can sort by rowid( table-name ), but are you shure you have comlete control over inserts/deletes? And what about backup/restore, they'll most likely reset your rowid numbers.

Regards
Mike