Number & Text in a String field... how can I represent them

[Enrique Cebrian]

Hello there!

I know this is hard to believe but... I have an issue in a project wasn't developed by myself.

I need to represent a field in a bubble-chart that could have text or numbers. This field is a String, so there shouldnt be any problem (of course isnt a best practice but... you know, business as usual).

The point is that, the customer want to have it orderedby numbers when numbers and by alphabetic order when text. And the most I can achieve at the moment is having it ordered without sign (in the numbers, there are negative numbers... see the image attached).

I thought to use the custom expression in the variable by using the FIND or RXReplace functionbut, as itis a external source (SQL Server), no way to use Spotfire regex (see post: https://community.spotfire.com/questions/rxreplace-add-function), also I have triedwith an IF (Var%1 = 0, cast as currency, Var)- i dont really know if this is going to work but... wanted to try -but it sais "Invalid Type function call if" (see post:https://community.spotfire.com/questions/invalid-type-function-call-if).

any ideas

Thank you in advantage!

[Corey Scherrer 3]

Will it always be either ALL numeric or ALL text  Or can it have both

[Enrique Cebrian]

all numeric (from -infinit to + infinit) and all text (products like Tomato)