Re: Storing number '001' ?

On Thu, 2001-12-06 at 12:33, Charles Hauser wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I need to store numbers which contain '0' as the first digit like '001', '01' .
>
> A little history.  A DNA clone_id is denoted by '894001A01.x1'.  I
> need to sort  clone_id, and have broken it down into its meaningful
> components:
>
> project:    894
> plate:        001
> plate row:    A
> plate column:     01
> read:        x
> ver:        1
>
> CREATE TABLE clone_fasta (
> project integer NOT NULL,
> plate integer NOT NULL,
> p_row char(1) NOT NULL,
> p_column integer NOT NULL,
> read char(1) NOT NULL,
> ver integer NOT NULL,
> length integer NOT NULL,
> seq text NOT NULL,
> PRIMARY KEY (project,plate,p_row,p_column,read,ver)
> );
>
> Unfortunately, storing these numbers as integers converts 001 ->1,
> which I can't use.
>
> How does one store a number like '001'?

If you have to deal with numbers such that '001' is different to '01'
then they are not numbers: they are _text_.

Therefore: store them in a 'TEXT' field instead.

Also, if you need to sort them into numeric order nonetheless, you could
left-pad with spaces so that '001' becomes '   001' and '01' became
'    01' and so forth.

Or you could just:
... ORDER BY int4(textfield) ...

You can even:
CREATE INDEX myindex ON myfile( int4(textfield));

to have that sort ordering supported by an index.

Regards,
                    Andrew.
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