Thanks Sergey, that worked fine.

Borislav - I tried your suggestion first because it was simpler but it placed the trailing alpa set after the group without the trailing alpha.

Thanks to both of you.

>Try

>index on left(sponsor_id,4) + str(val(substr(sponsor_id,5,8))) + ;
>             PADR(CHRTRAN(substr(sponsor_id,5,8), [0123456789], []), 4)...
>

>
>>I need to index a field that contains values like:
>>
>>RTA-1
>>RTA-2
>>RTA-3
>>RTA-3a
>>RTA-10
>>RTA-10a
>>RTA-10b
>>
>>etc. How would you construct an index statement that would sort in the order shown?
>>

>>index on left(sponsor_id,4) + str(val(substr(sponsor_id,5,8))) to temp
>>

>>almost works but misses the alpha in the last position.
>>
>>
>>Thanks