Re: Sql ORDER BY and ASC/DESC question

From: Gregory Stark <stark(at)enterprisedb(dot)com>
To: "Tom Lane" <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us>
Cc: "A(dot) Kretschmer" <andreas(dot)kretschmer(at)schollglas(dot)com>, <pgsql-sql(at)postgresql(dot)org>
Subject: Re: Sql ORDER BY and ASC/DESC question
Date: 2008-01-30 20:24:09
Message-ID: 87ir1buknq.fsf@oxford.xeocode.com
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"Tom Lane" <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us> writes:

> Gregory Stark <stark(at)enterprisedb(dot)com> writes:
>
>> ORDER BY
>> CASE ?
>> WHEN 1 THEN name ASC
>
> Uh, no, putting the ASC/DESC decoration inside a CASE like that is not
> gonna work

doh! I had a feeling something was wrong but couldn't put my finger on it
before I hit send. Sigh.

> For numerical sort keys you can cheat by using "-x" in place of
> "x DESC", but I'm not aware of any equivalent hack for text keys.

Yeah, you could do a really kludgy thing with a second sort expression where
you null out one expression or the other depending on the parameter but it
starts to look more and more spaghetti-like.

--
Gregory Stark
EnterpriseDB http://www.enterprisedb.com
Get trained by Bruce Momjian - ask me about EnterpriseDB's PostgreSQL training!

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