Sorting on varchar2 columns containing data that are almost numbers (but not quite) is a problem.

In the example below, all the 10.x "numbers" should come after the 2.x numbers, and 10.1 should come after 10.2. Sorting it "as a number" fixes the first but not the second issue.
The "A Lpad" column does fix both, but it's not very elegant of course. And ideally you don't want to show that column to the user, and only use it to sort the data "in the background" without the user ever seeing it.
I have played around with this, but haven't found a nice solution yet.
The "HTML Expression" column option seemed like the best bet, but that also falls short. If you want to use that, you cannot make "A Lpad" a hidden column, which means the user still sees it.
And Exporting the report (e.g. to CSV) with the correct sort order, but without the "A Lpad" column, also seems impossible.
So if this is possible, I still have to find out how...

Page

Identification
	Page ID	1191
	Name	Apex - Reports - Sorting strings as numbers

Region

Identification
	Sequence	20
	Title	IR
	Type	Interactive Report
Source
	Source Type	Interactive Report
	Table Name	TED_P1191_V

View

View
	Name	TED_P1191_V
	DDL	with iv_a as ( select '1.1' as a from dual union all select '1.2' as a from dual union all select '2.1' as a from dual union all select '2.2' as a from dual union all select '10.1' as a from dual union all select '10.2' as a from dual union all select '10.11' as a from dual ) select iv_a.a as a_varchar2 , to_number(iv_a.a) as a_number , lpad(substr(iv_a.a, 1, instr(iv_a.a, '.') - 1), 2, ' ') || '.' || lpad(substr(iv_a.a, instr(iv_a.a, '.') + 1), 2, '0') as a_lpad from iv_a