Re: get numbers only question

[Rick James]

If employee_numbers are supposed to be "whole numbers":
ALTER TABLE employees MODIFY employee_number INT UNSIGNED NOT NULL;

But this will be messed up: "1.222".

To also handle 1.222, then leave the table alone, but do

SELECT MAX(0+employee_number) FROM employees WHERE employee_number REGEXP ('[0-9]');
The "0+" converts employee_number into a number, which tricks it into doing a 'numeric' MAX. 1.222 will sort between 1 and 2.