How to order mysql query output from partial column data in 3 tables

Question

Essentially i'm trying to concatenate the Driver data from all 3 tables into one output query organized with regex through mysql using data from said columns.

The issue i'm trying to solve has to do with the ordering of my output data. for example: i have 3 tables, each of these 3 tables have a column called driver with the same data. the difference being the "driver/index" in the driver column.

With this data I plan to rearrange slips and customer information to the drivers liking.
eg

Table |Column |Data
DeliverySlip [Driver] (kevin/1)
PickupSlip [Driver] (kevin/3)
NewCustInfo [Driver] (kevin/2)

---

output should be:

1. DeliverySlip
2. NewCustInfo
3. PickupSlip

instead of:

1. DeliverySlip
2. PickupSlip
3. NewCustInfo

---

my code:

$driverget1="Kevin/1"; // this is grabbed through an SQL SELECT statement
$drivername=explode($driverget1,"/");
$tablearray2 = "DeliverySlip|PickupSlip|NewCustInfo";
$table2 = explode("|", $tablearray2);
$Query = "SELECT * FROM `bwa1`.`$table2[0]`,`bwa1`.`$table2[1]`,`bwa1`.`$table2[2]` WHERE `Driver` REGEXP '{$drivername[0]}/' AND `Accomplished`='0' ORDER BY `Driver` REGEXP '/[[:digit:]]' ASC";

of course i get an ambiguous error. so, I was thinking about using the JOIN statements. however that only seems to join columns instead of tables from my understanding. I just want to sort the drivers based on the NAME/INDEX and ignore the fact that i'm grabbing information from 3 different tables. What is the best way to sort this data?

UPDATE:

I started playing around with UNION, this is what i was looking for. an example below:

SELECT * FROM 
(
  SELECT NewCustInfo.Driver,NewCustInfo.id,NewCustInfo.Accomplished 
        FROM NewCustInfo WHERE NewCustInfo.Driver 
        REGEXP 'Test123/' AND NewCustInfo.Accomplished='0' 
        ORDER BY NewCustInfo.Driver REGEXP '/[[:digit:]]' ASC
) DUMMY_ALIAS1

UNION ALL

SELECT * FROM 
( 
  SELECT PickupSlip.Driver,PickupSlip.id,PickupSlip.Accomplished 
        FROM PickupSlip WHERE PickupSlip.Driver 
        REGEXP 'Test123/' AND PickupSlip.Accomplished='0' 
        ORDER BY PickupSlip.Driver REGEXP '/[[:digit:]]' ASC
) DUMMY_ALIAS2

UNION ALL

SELECT * FROM 
( 
  SELECT DeliverySlip.Driver,DeliverySlip.id,DeliverySlip.Accomplished 
        FROM DeliverySlip WHERE DeliverySlip.Driver 
        REGEXP 'Test123/' AND DeliverySlip.Accomplished='0' 
        ORDER BY DeliverySlip.Driver REGEXP '/[[:digit:]]' ASC
) DUMMY_ALIAS3

I still need to figure out from which table each item came from originally after the full union. Only thing I can think of is to insert the table name into the Driver column and seperate that with a delimiter so that it can be REGEXP'd.

Answer 1

how about adding table name in select like this:

SELECT * FROM  
(  
    SELECT NewCustInfo.Driver,NewCustInfo.id,NewCustInfo.Accomplished,'NewCustInfo' as tbname
    FROM NewCustInfo WHERE NewCustInfo.Driver 
    REGEXP 'Test123/' AND NewCustInfo.Accomplished='0' 
    ORDER BY NewCustInfo.Driver REGEXP '/[[:digit:]]' ASC
) DUMMY_ALIAS1

UNION ALL

SELECT * FROM 
( 
    SELECT PickupSlip.Driver,PickupSlip.id,PickupSlip.Accomplished,'PickupSlip' as tbname
    FROM PickupSlip WHERE PickupSlip.Driver 
    REGEXP 'Test123/' AND PickupSlip.Accomplished='0' 
    ORDER BY PickupSlip.Driver REGEXP '/[[:digit:]]' ASC
) DUMMY_ALIAS2

UNION ALL

SELECT * FROM 
( 
    SELECT DeliverySlip.Driver,DeliverySlip.id,DeliverySlip.Accomplished,'DeliveryShip' as tbname
    FROM DeliverySlip WHERE DeliverySlip.Driver 
    REGEXP 'Test123/' AND DeliverySlip.Accomplished='0' 
    ORDER BY DeliverySlip.Driver REGEXP '/[[:digit:]]' ASC
) DUMMY_ALIAS3

Answer 2

SELECT * FROM (SELECT PickupSlip.Driver, 
SUBSTRING_INDEX(PickupSlip.Driver, '/', -1) AS orderindex, 
SUBSTRING_INDEX(PickupSlip.Driver, '/', 1) AS thedriver,
WHERE PickupSlip.Driver 
REGEXP '{$driverget1}/' 
AND PickupSlip.Accomplished='0') DUMMY_ALIAS1
ORDER BY (orderindex+0) ASC

This was the code i settled for.