Let's say we have a table of records as under
Record
------
01A1
02A1
18A1
20A1
17A1
19A1
01B1
02B1
20B1
17B1
18B1
19B1
We need the reocrds to be sorted such that the final output should appear as
Record
---------
01A1
01B1
02A1
02B1
17A1
17B1
18A1
18B1
19A1
19B1
20A1
20B1
The below query will do so
DECLARE @T TABLE(Record VARCHAR(20))
INSERT INTO @T
SELECT '01A1' UNION ALL
SELECT '02A1' UNION ALL
SELECT '18A1' UNION ALL
SELECT '20A1' UNION ALL
SELECT '17A1' UNION ALL
SELECT '19A1' UNION ALL
SELECT '01B1' UNION ALL
SELECT '02B1' UNION ALL
SELECT '20B1' UNION ALL
SELECT '17B1' UNION ALL
SELECT '18B1' UNION ALL
SELECT '19B1'
SELECT *
FROM @T
ORDER BY
CAST(SUBSTRING(Record, PATINDEX('%[0-9]%', Record), PATINDEX('%[0-9][^0-9]%', Record + 't') - PATINDEX('%[0-9]%', Record) + 1) AS INT)
,LEFT(REVERSE(SUBSTRING(Record, PATINDEX('%[0-9]%', Record), PATINDEX('%[0-9][^0-9]%', Record + 't') - PATINDEX('%[0-9]%', Record) + 2)),1)
Here we are first sorting by numbers and then by Alphabets