Can ACE select a CHAR field and treat it as an INTEGER?

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