ORDER BY LENGTH?

Anon

Hello,

If I run this query:

SELECT id, item_name, linkto FROM menu_options ORDER BY LENGTH(item_name) ASC;

mySQL says:

You have an error in your SQL syntax near '(item_name) ASC;' at line 1

I am positive that I have the correct field names in the query, what am I doing wrong?

brandonschnell

works fine for me in sorting a table on data type CHAR(255) with mysql version 3.23.36.

you may want to see what the following query does:
SELECT item_name, LENGTH(item_name) FROM menu_options;

just to see if the function length() is working and to see what it returns.

steved

SQL doesn't like you to use functions in an order by clause. Try something like this:

select id, item_name, linkto, len(item_name) as NameLen from menu_options order by NameLen

Note: I used the 'len' function because I tested this on MS SQL and it doesn't like 'length'. The other database I have (Oracle) uses 'length'. I don't know which is correct for mySQL.

Anon

Brandon,
Your query works just fine, but it doesn't return item_name ordered by length (ASC). Any other ideas? thanks.

Anon

Hey! That worked great! Thank you!