Orderby with a string that contains part numbers and part letters - sql-server

Question

I am using MSSQL ADO.NET and I need to sort order by employer code numercially although each order code has 2X letters in front of it.
For example:
HP1234
HP1233
HP1236
Essentially I am trying to seperate the numbers from the letters and order by either asc or desc just with the numbers to give some order. I wondered if anyone can advise on a good approach to do this withing an orderby clause.

Answer 1

SELECT *
FROM YourTable
ORDER BY CONVERT(int, RIGHT(employer_code, LEN(employer_code) - 2))

Answer 2

Note I did not add any erro checking, but this would help if the pattern changed etc. Even though this is C#, you can convert the code to VB.
void Main()
{
var arrayOfString = new string []{"HP1234","HP1233","HP1236"};
var pat =#"(?<name>\d+)";
Regex r = new Regex(pat, RegexOptions.IgnoreCase);
var orderedItems = arrayOfString.OrderBy(x=>{
var match = r.Match(x);
return match.Groups["name"].Value;
});
foreach (var item in orderedItems)
{
Console.WriteLine(item);
}
}
VB Code
Private Sub Main()
Dim arrayOfString = New String() {"HP1234", "HP1233", "HP1236"}
Dim pat = "(?<name>\d+)"
Dim r As New Regex(pat, RegexOptions.IgnoreCase)
Dim orderedItems = arrayOfString.OrderBy(Function(x) GetSortOrder(x,r))
For Each item As string In orderedItems
Console.WriteLine(item)
Next
End Sub
Function GetSortOrder(x , r)
Dim match = r.Match(x)
Return match.Groups("name").Value
End Function