SQLite ORDER BY string containing number starting with 0

Question

as the title states:

I have a select query, which I\'m trying to \"order by\" a field which contains numbers, the thing is this numbers are really strings starting w

Answer 1

You can use CAST http://www.sqlite.org/lang_expr.html#castexpr to cast the expression to an Integer.

sqlite> CREATE TABLE T (value VARCHAR(2));
sqlite> INSERT INTO T (value) VALUES ('10');
sqlite> INSERT INTO T (value) VALUES ('11');
sqlite> INSERT INTO T (value) VALUES ('12');    
sqlite> INSERT INTO T (value) VALUES ('01');
sqlite> INSERT INTO T (value) VALUES ('02');
sqlite> INSERT INTO T (value) VALUES ('03');
sqlite> SELECT * FROM T ORDER BY CAST(value AS INTEGER);
01
02
03
10
11
12
sqlite>

if I do this: "...ORDER BY (field+1)" I can workaround this, because somehow the string is internally being converted to integer. Is the a way to "officially" convert it like C's atoi?

Well thats interesting, though I dont know how many DBMS support such an operation so I don't recommend it just in case you ever need to use a different system that doesn't support it, not to mention you are adding an extra operation, which can affect performance, though you also do this ORDER BY (field + 0) Im going to investigate the performance

taken from the sqlite3 docs:

A CAST expression is used to convert the value of to a different storage class in a similar way to the conversion that takes place when a column affinity is applied to a value. Application of a CAST expression is different to application of a column affinity, as with a CAST expression the storage class conversion is forced even if it is lossy and irrreversible.

4.0 Operators
All mathematical operators (+, -, *, /, %, <<, >>, &, and |) cast both operands to the NUMERIC storage class prior to being carried out. The cast is carried through even if it is lossy and irreversible. A NULL operand on a mathematical operator yields a NULL result. An operand on a mathematical operator that does not look in any way numeric and is not NULL is converted to 0 or 0.0.

I was curios so I ran some benchmarks:

>>> setup = """
... import sqlite3
... import timeit
... 
... conn = sqlite3.connect(':memory:')
... c = conn.cursor()
... c.execute('CREATE TABLE T (value int)')
... for index in range(4000000, 0, -1):
...     _ = c.execute('INSERT INTO T (value) VALUES (%i)' % index)
... conn.commit()
... """
>>> 
>>> cast_conv = "result = c.execute('SELECT * FROM T ORDER BY CAST(value AS INTEGER)')"
>>> cast_affinity = "result = c.execute('SELECT * FROM T ORDER BY (value + 0)')"
>>> timeit.Timer(cast_conv, setup).timeit(number = 1)
18.145697116851807
>>> timeit.Timer(cast_affinity, setup).timeit(number = 1)
18.259973049163818
>>>

As we can see its a bit slower though not by much, interesting.