[RESOLVED] "Smart" sorting data

[areber04]

I have a database with data that needs to be retrieved, sorted, and displayed to a webpage. The main column of interest, we'll call it paragraphNum with data that looks something like "A.3.2.1", "A.3.13.2", "A.10.1.4" etc. When I retrieve the data and display it sorted, it will put "A.3.13.2" ahead of "A.3.2.1", and "A.10.1.4" ahead of both of them. because it just goes character by character and takes '13' as a '1' followed by a '3' rather than the number '13'. Same thing for the items that start with numbers. (Windows has the option to "smart sort" file names, that's basically what I'm trying to do with the data)

I know it's a long shot, but is there any somewhat simple way to do this other than writing a function to step through each paragraphNum character-by-character, using periods to mark the end of a whole number, then sorting? I'm fairly new to php so I'm not very familiar with many advanced functions, so maybe I missed something that will aid me as there seem to be quite a few powerful string manipulation functions.

I am using MySQL, PHP, and Javascript.

[areber04]

Another note: I'd like the make this as dynamic as possible. 'paragraphNum' for other data may have the form '101.3.4' or '1.3.4.5'. More variations may be added to the database later as well. So I'm sure there isn't a "magic" function that will do this specific task, but any functions that you might be able to direct me to that I could string together to get this to work woul dbe greatly appreciated. As I mentioned, I am fairly new to php, so any string functions you can point out would be of help. Thanks!

[areber04]

It looks like the PHP function natsort() does exactly what I want. The problem is how do I use it on a MySQL result set without copying all of the data into an array?