Want to sort CHAR field NUMERICALLY in ACE report

I posted this before, but thought I'd make the subject clearer. I'm selecting a character field in an ACE report but I want to use order by to sort it numerically. I think there is or should be a way to cast the char field to type int, but I don't know what it is. Here's the original post: thanks, Eric (eric@saperstein.com) Eric Thompson <thompson@netcom.com> wrote: >I have a situation in which I'd like to select a character field >from a table and sort it as though it were an integer. I know in advance >that all rows returned will have numeric values, even though the field >must remain a char field. > >I thought something like this should work, but it doesn't: > > select int(char_field) > from table > order by 1 > >One inelegant method of solving this that I think might work is: > > select char_field > from table > order by char_field[1], char_field[2], ..., char_field[8]> >But that stops working after the eighth digit. > >Any help is appreciated. E-mail preferred. > >thanks, > >Eric Thompson eric@saperstein.com (NeXTmail ok) >Saperstein, Mayeda & Goldstein thompson@netcom.com