Natural Sort in MySQL

Question

Is there an elegant way to have performant, natural sorting in a MySQL database?

For example if I have this data set:

• Final Fantasy
• Final Fant

Answer 1

If you're using PHP you can do the the natural sort in php.

$keys = array();
$values = array();
foreach ($results as $index => $row) {
   $key = $row['name'].'__'.$index; // Add the index to create an unique key.
   $keys[] = $key;
   $values[$key] = $row; 
}
natsort($keys);
$sortedValues = array(); 
foreach($keys as $index) {
  $sortedValues[] = $values[$index]; 
}

I hope MySQL will implement natural sorting in a future version, but the feature request (#1588) is open since 2003, So I wouldn't hold my breath.