erm, have you tried using an "order by" clause in your MySQL query? eg: 
my $sth21= $dbh->prepare(qq{SELECT MR_M FROM MR2 ORDER BY MR_M});

[download]
When you do a select from MySQL with no order by, it just returns records in the same order as they were inserted.

However, even with the order by clause, you may still not get the expected result. Your columns are presumably "char" or "text" types, but from the description of your problem you really want them ordered numerically. If you're familiar with your data, there is a trick you can use with MySQL to achieve this. Basically, you order the data based on a subset of the field in question. So you could do something like: 

SELECT MR_M FROM MR2 ORDER BY RIGHT(MR_M,LENGTH(MR_M)-1);

[download]
This would drop the first character of the string (the "M") and sort on the remaining characters - the numerics.

Alternatively, you could sort the array/s as you print it/them. Although, you'd still face the same challenges with numeric vs lexical sorting.

Hope this helps,
Darren :)

In reply to Re: DBI fetchrow_array problems by McDarren
in thread DBI fetchrow_array problems by Anonymous Monk

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.