How to ORDER BY varchar field as number?

Question

I have problem with sort/order by, not working like I need.

SELECT `proc` FROM `table` ORDER BY `proc` DESC;

Result:

80.0 p         


        

Answer 1

It looks like "proc" is a string (varchar field), so it gets ordered lexically. If it is so, you can probably order it by

SELECT `proc` FROM `table` ORDER BY convert(`proc`, decimal) DESC;

Please note that such queries will be very slow, and for any serious usage it's better to use numeric columns for storing numeric data.