sure, anything is possible.

I cannot provide you a 100% answer because I don't know your data. I made the assumption that:

a) if the string doesn't have a / in it, its a number that I can to_number
b) 2/02-03 is a date in dd/mm format, not sure what the -03 is. I ignored it.

So, if those assumptions are not correct -- you should be able to take the method below and CHANGE it yourself into a method that works. What is important is you see the technique, not that you get the exact answer:

ops$tkyte@ORA817DEV.US.ORACLE.COM> select * from t
2 order by decode( sign(instr(x,'/')), 1, 2, 1 ),
3 decode( sign(instr(x,'/')), 1, 0, to_number(x) ),
4 decode( sign(instr(x,'/')), 1, to_date(substr(x,1,instr(x,'-')-1),'dd/mm'), to_date(null) )
5 /

X
--------------------
22
231
5678
2/02-03
10/02-03
12/02-03

6 rows selected.

ops$tkyte@ORA817DEV.US.ORACLE.COM>

So, that order by is really:

order by
<if the string has a slash in it, we want those "2cnd" so return 2, else
return 1>,

<if the string has a slash in it, return 0, else to_number the string so
Oracle will sort the string as a number. Remember, all strings with
slashes will have a 2 as the first order by and a 0 as the second now>

<if the string has a slash in it, return to_date on the first part, else
return null>


You will probably have to work on that last part given I don't know your rules for sorting that.