Natural Sort in MySQL

Question

Is there an elegant way to have performant, natural sorting in a MySQL database?

For example if I have this data set:

• Final Fantasy
• Final Fantasy 4
• Final Fantasy 10
• Final Fantasy 12
• Final Fantasy 12: Chains of Promathia
• Final Fantasy Adventure
• Final Fantasy Origins
• Final Fantasy Tactics

Any other elegant solution than to split up the games' names into their components

• Title: "Final Fantasy"
• Number: "12"
• Subtitle: "Chains of Promathia"

to make sure that they come out in the right order? (10 after 4, not before 2).

Doing so is a pain in the a** because every now and then there's another game that breaks that mechanism of parsing the game title (e.g. "Warhammer 40,000", "James Bond 007")

Answer 1

Here is a quick solution:

SELECT alphanumeric, 
       integer
FROM sorting_test
ORDER BY LENGTH(alphanumeric), alphanumeric