yes, I saw that, but I preferred the resulting ordering, as prefixing with Chr(48) will eliminate any chances to differentiate user entered "3" vs. "03".
Similar to "AA" being later than "A" and "B", "03" is not seen as numeric value but ordered chr().
Thats why I had marked that spot often in my comments, no "right" way IMO, only agreed upon implementation ;-)

>This will fail on the 5;03;10
>
>but I guess I can do it from here. Antonios Code looks very nice for the transform and I will get an idea about the number of chgaracters per group.
>
>Thank you (_ _)
>
>>

>>TEXT TO lcx NOSHOW  
>>1
>>10
>>2
>>03
>>1.1
>>12.R
>>1.1.R
>>1201.1.RBX.250.R.1
>>1.R
>>1.R.1
>>A
>>B
>>AA
>>5.R
>>CDXB
>>ENDTEXT &&lcx 
>>
>>STRTOFILE(lcx,'xyz.tmp')
>>
>>CREATE CURSOR curXYZ (cField c(40), cSortFld c(240))
>>APPEND FROM xyz.tmp DELIMITED WITH TAB
>>DELETE FILE xyz.tmp
>>
>>replace ALL cSortFld WITH IP_Ascii (cField)
>>INDEX on cSortFld TAG cSortFld
>>browse
>>
>>
>>FUNCTION IP_ASCII(tcRow)
>>LOCAL lnColLen, lnMaxCol, lnColCnt, laCols[1], lcErg, lcAdd, luCol
>>lnColLen = 5
>>lnMaxCol = 7
>>lnColCnt = ALINES(laCols, UPPER(tcRow),1,".")
>>lcErg = ""
>>FOR lnCurCol = 1 TO lnMaxCol
>>   lcAdd = IIF(lnColCnt>=lnCurCol,laCols[lnCurCol], "")
>>    lcErg = m.lcErg + PADL(m.lcAdd, m.lnColLen, iif (EMPTY(m.lcAdd), CHR(45), IIF(ISAlpha(m.lcAdd), CHR(64), CHR(47)))) + "." 
>>next
>>RETURN m.lcErg
>>
>>