Storing leading zeros of integers in MySQL database as INTEGER

Question

I need MySQL to store numbers in a integer field and maintain leading zeros. I cannot use the zerofill option as my current field is Bigint(16) and numbers can vary in amount of leading zeros. IE: 0001 - 0005, then 008 - 010 may need to be stored. I am not concerned about uniqueness of numbers (these aren't being used as IDs or anything) but I still need them to be stored preferably as INTS.

The issue using CHAR/VARCHAR and then typecasting the values as integers in PHP means that sorting results via queries leads to alphanumeric sorting, IE: SORT BY number ASC would produce

001
002
003
1
100
101
102
2

Clearly not in numerical order, but in alphanumeric order, which isn't wanted.

Hoping for some clever workarounds :)

Answer 1

Keep the numbers stored as integers.

Then use function LPAD() to show the numbers (left) padded with zeros:

SELECT LPAD( 14, 7, '0') AS padded;

| padded  |
-----------
| 0000014 |

If the number of zerofill characters is variable, add another column in the table with that (zerofill) length.