Section Symbol and sorting by IP Address

Question

The query below works and is extremely useful...

SELECT DisplayName
     , IPAddress
     , 0 + ToString(ARRAYVALUEAT(SPLITSTRINGTOARRAY(REPLACE(IPAddress,'.','|§|§|')),0)) AS O1
     , 0 + ToString(ARRAYVALUEAT(SPLITSTRINGTOARRAY(REPLACE(IPAddress,'.','|§|§|')),1)) AS O2
     , 0 + ToString(ARRAYVALUEAT(SPLITSTRINGTOARRAY(REPLACE(IPAddress,'.','|§|§|')),2)) AS O3
     , 0 + ToString(ARRAYVALUEAT(SPLITSTRINGTOARRAY(REPLACE(IPAddress,'.','|§|§|')),3)) AS O4
FROM Orion.Nodes
ORDER BY O1,O2,O3,O4

... and is referenced a couple times on the thwack site in posts that are either closed or are in the feature request section (old)... the last mention of it I could find was from 2018.

Can someone show me where the splitstringtoarray function is documented and the role the section symbol (§) plays in it OR is there a better equivalent to the above query I should be using in SWQL?

...or did the section symbol get used simply because it's not often used and it plays no special role in the function?

Chris-S · Answer

Thanks, tdanner... that's what I was assuming about the section sign I just wanted confirmation.  Are any of the functions used in the above example still going to be removed from the SDK?  If so, is there a replacement for the code above that sorts by IP address?

tdanner · Answer

Nothing really to add to what I posted before. The |§|§| delimiter was just chosen by some developer as a magic string unlikely to occur in normal text.

shuth · Answer

Based on the comment in the thread below, @tdanner says it was only meant to be used internally and he removed the documentation for it from the SDK wiki.

https://thwack.solarwinds.com/product-forums/the-orion-platform/f/orion-sdk/20390/swql---splitstringtoarray---arrayvalueat

Hopefully he'll see the @ and be able to provide some more detail.