A thought... let say you have a address attribute (123 main street.) And now you wish to order them by street name in a list ASC. So the obvious trouble would become that following order would take place.
122 Power Street
123 main Street
The numeric portion of the address would create the order prior to the street name.
Can you "pass over" a numeric part of the address attribute to create an order by the street name without creating a separate attribute for the street number?
(hope that makes sense)
Cheers,