How does the Default Sort function handle numeric string data?

The Default Sort function in Alteryx treats numeric string data as regular text when performing a sort. This means that numeric values represented as strings are sorted character by character, left to right. The sorting process compares each character in the string according to its ASCII value, which leads to sorting based on the individual characters rather than their numeric values.

For instance, when sorting the strings "10", "2", and "5", the Default Sort function would consider them in the order of their first characters. Therefore, "10" would come before "2" since '1' has a lower ASCII value than '2'. This behavior is crucial to understand when working with data where numeric values might be unintentionally stored as strings, as it can lead to results that are not numerically accurate. This character-by-character logic is what fundamentally distinguishes sorting numeric strings from sorting actual numeric values.