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I use the property "pages" for the number of pages of an article or book.
There are two problems.
First:
If I use C-c ^ to sort the items by the value of pages
org-sort seems to interpret the numbers lexicographically: 1<100<20<3.
Of course I need the natural order of numbers: 1<3<20<100.
Second:
If I use C-c a m to search for items with pages<20 I get
the correct items and the "wrong" items: where the pages property is not defined.
How to ignore the "wrong" items?
For the first problem, you have to use a function like this:
#+BEGIN_SRC emacs-lisp
(defun sort-by-pages ()
(string-to-number (org-entry-get nil "pages")))
#+END_SRC
then type C-c ^ f and select the function sort-by-pages. The problem is properties in org-mode are strings, and you need this to convert them to numbers.
For problem two try: pages<20+pages<>"" the second one should eliminate the nulls.
