>and the Line field is a left-justified char string of 1 or 2 chars, and I really want to sort by PADL(Line,2) for some reason issuing:
>
>SELECT PADL(Line,2) FROM SomeFile ORDER BY 1
>
>does NOT result in a properly sorted query.

Have you tried:
SELECT PADL(ALLTRIM(Line),2) FROM SomeFile ORDER BY 1