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ORDER BY
is an output modifier. Logically it is applied near the very end of the query (just prior to LIMIT
or OFFSET
, if present).
The ORDER BY
clause sorts the rows on the sorting criteria in either ascending or descending order.
In addition, every order clause can specify whether NULL
values should be moved to the beginning or to the end.
The ORDER BY
clause may contain one or more expressions, separated by commas.
An error will be thrown if no expressions are included, since the ORDER BY
clause should be removed in that situation.
The expressions may begin with either an arbitrary scalar expression (which could be a column name), a column position number (Ex: 1
. Note that it is 1-indexed), or the keyword ALL
.
Each expression can optionally be followed by an order modifier (ASC
or DESC
, default is ASC
), and/or a NULL
order modifier (NULLS FIRST
or NULLS LAST
, default is NULLS LAST
).
ORDER BY ALL
The ALL
keyword indicates that the output should be sorted by every column in order from left to right.
The direction of this sort may be modified using either ORDER BY ALL ASC
or ORDER BY ALL DESC
and/or NULLS FIRST
or NULLS LAST
.
Note that ALL
may not be used in combination with other expressions in the ORDER BY
clause – it must be by itself.
See examples below.
NULL Order Modifier
By default if no modifiers are provided, DuckDB sorts ASC NULLS LAST
, i.e., the values are sorted in ascending order and null values are placed last.
This is identical to the default sort order of PostgreSQL. The default sort order can be changed with the following configuration options.
Using
ASC NULLS LAST
as the default sorting order was a breaking change in version 0.8.0. Prior to 0.8.0, DuckDB sorted usingASC NULLS FIRST
.
Change the default null sorting order to either NULLS FIRST
and NULLS LAST
:
SET default_null_order = 'NULLS FIRST';
Change the default sorting order to either DESC
or ASC
:
SET default_order = 'DESC';
Collations
Text is sorted using the binary comparison collation by default, which means values are sorted on their binary UTF-8 values. While this works well for ASCII text (e.g., for English language data), the sorting order can be incorrect for other languages. For this purpose, DuckDB provides collations. For more information on collations, see the Collation page.
Examples
All examples use this example table:
CREATE OR REPLACE TABLE addresses AS
SELECT '123 Quack Blvd' AS address, 'DuckTown' AS city, '11111' AS zip
UNION ALL
SELECT '111 Duck Duck Goose Ln', 'DuckTown', '11111'
UNION ALL
SELECT '111 Duck Duck Goose Ln', 'Duck Town', '11111'
UNION ALL
SELECT '111 Duck Duck Goose Ln', 'Duck Town', '11111-0001';
Select the addresses, ordered by city name using the default null order and default order:
SELECT *
FROM addresses
ORDER BY city;
Select the addresses, ordered by city name in descending order with nulls at the end:
SELECT *
FROM addresses
ORDER BY city DESC NULLS LAST;
Order by city and then by zip code, both using the default orderings:
SELECT *
FROM addresses
ORDER BY city, zip;
Order by city using German collation rules:
SELECT *
FROM addresses
ORDER BY city COLLATE DE;
ORDER BY ALL
Examples
Order from left to right (by address, then by city, then by zip) in ascending order:
SELECT *
FROM addresses
ORDER BY ALL;
address | city | zip |
---|---|---|
111 Duck Duck Goose Ln | Duck Town | 11111 |
111 Duck Duck Goose Ln | Duck Town | 11111-0001 |
111 Duck Duck Goose Ln | DuckTown | 11111 |
123 Quack Blvd | DuckTown | 11111 |
Order from left to right (by address, then by city, then by zip) in descending order:
SELECT *
FROM addresses
ORDER BY ALL DESC;
address | city | zip |
---|---|---|
123 Quack Blvd | DuckTown | 11111 |
111 Duck Duck Goose Ln | DuckTown | 11111 |
111 Duck Duck Goose Ln | Duck Town | 11111-0001 |
111 Duck Duck Goose Ln | Duck Town | 11111 |