On Wed, 2005-01-19 at 16:37, Rick Schumeyer wrote: > I have a table where one of the columns is a library of congress > number. > > I would like to be able to ORDER BY this column. > > > > Currently, the column is a varchar. Unfortunately, a normal string > comparison > > will not work. > > > > First, has anyone done this already? > > > > If not, Iâm thinking I would need to: > > 1) define a new type to hold LOC numbers. > > 2) write a function that determines less than, greater than > > > > It seems like Iâm missing something here. I have not yet defined a > new > > typeâis defining less/greater part of that process? > > > > Is there a simpler way to do this? You might want to do something along the lines of storing the PARTs of the loc number, then using lpad/rpad in a function to put them together in such a way to as to render them orderable. Is there an URL on how LOC numbers are ordered? ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 2: you can get off all lists at once with the unregister command (send "unregister YourEmailAddressHere" to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx)