Sorting Numbers

[BigBadMac]

OK, so I'm feeling meek... How do I get FM to sort numbers as whole numbers? This was easy in some PC based DB programs but I cannot seem to find any way to have my return sorts come back the way I need them to. What's the trick?

What FM does...............What I want

1..................................1

10................................2

10052..........................3

2..................................10

3..................................379

379..............................10052

[-Queue-]

Include as many leading zeroes as you may have maximum digits. Create a text calculation of Right( "00000000" & number; 8 ), for example, if you anticipate no number greater than 99999999. Then sort on this field.

[The Shadow]

If you change your field type to "number", they will sort properly.

[-Queue-]

I agree with The Shadow, as long as they should be number fields. If they are ID numbers or some other type of data on which you're not performing any numeric calculations, then you may not want to change them to number.

[BigBadMac]

OK, I get the field type as numbers, but let's say I want to include alpha as well. For instance if I have a number such as 148-b3? Can a number field accept alpha?

[The Shadow]

You can include it, but the "b" won't be indexed, so if you use a value-list on this field, only one of "148-a3" and "148-b3" will be shown, because they are considered to have the same numeric value.

Similarly, 148-a3 will be related to 148-b3 if they are join keys, and it is tricky to find one without the other.