> If you say "leading spaces" do you mean right-justifying the field? I
> didn't think of that, but of course that works. Only in that case the
> numerical values may be interspersed with non-numerals, and leading
> zeroes will spoil the ordering too:

I would use another field to indicate what type of value is stored in the code field and create a
two-field index.

>
> 1
> 2
> 4
> T
> a
> z
> 00
> 11
> 27
> 67
> FB
> IB
> a3
> xx
> 007
> 0KM
> 203
> 666
> A18
> Ann
> SET
> ded

--
Raymond Kennington
Programming Solutions
TeamW2W (InfoPower)