SQL-Order Strings containing numbers

Question

I have the following values in my table:

a 3
a 5
a 7
aa 5
a 10
b 5

With the ORDER BY command I get the following:

a 10
a 3
a 5
a 7
aa 5
b 5

I want the following result:

a 3
a 5
a 7
aa 5
a 10
b 5

Any ideas how I can solve it in my SQL query?

Answer 1

You can use substring_index() to split data when order:

SELECT
    col1
FROM
    table1 t
ORDER BY
    SUBSTRING_INDEX(col1, ' ', 1),
    CAST(SUBSTRING_INDEX(SUBSTRING_INDEX(col1, ' ', 2),' ',- 1) AS UNSIGNED)

However aa will become after all a as your desired ordering logic is contradicting with data values in both 'columns', one of them must be leading. This query returns:

a 3
a 5
a 7
a 10
aa 5
b 5