Removing leading zeros in a string in a VFP page?

Question

I have a VFP that displays a list of cases and includes the case number column like this:

<apex:column >
    <apex:facet name="header">
        <apex:commandLink value="Case #" action="{!toggleSortSpecial}" rerender="results,sc,debug" status="busyCursor">
            <apex:param name="sortField" value="CaseNumber" assignTo="{!sortOrderSpecial}"/>
            <apex:outputPanel rendered="{!BEGINS(sortOrderSpecial,'CaseNumber')}">
                &nbsp;<apex:image value="{!IF(sortDirSpecial = 'desc','/img/arrowDown.gif','/img/arrowUp.gif')}"/>
            </apex:outputPanel>
        </apex:commandLink>
    </apex:facet>

    <!-- apex:outputLink value="/{!case.Id}">{!case.CaseNumber}</apex:outputLink -->
    <apex:outputText value="{0}">
        <apex:param value="{!case.CaseNumber}"/>
    </apex:outputText>
</apex:column>

The field displayed comes from a SoQL command that I build inside my Apex code:

soqlSpecial = 'SELECT Id, CaseNumber, Severity__c, Subject, Contact.Email, CreatedDate, OwnerId ' +
    'FROM Case ' +
    'WHERE CaseNumber IN (' + scl + ') ' +
    'ORDER BY ' + genSortOrder(sortOrderSpecial, sortDirSpecial);

This works fine except that the case.CaseNumber field is an eight-character string containing a number that is zero-filled, so the output looks like:

00002700
00002701

Screen space is always at a premium so I want to remove these leading zeros but I cannot find a way of doing it.

There do not seem to be any SOQL functions that I can add in to the SELECT to return a number instead of a string.

outputtext only has formatting options for numbers but not text, and it is smart enough to recognize that {!case.CaseNumber} is a string, so that's not an option either.

I am at a loss. It looks like I need to so the conversion/truncation before it reaches the VFP but I cannot see how.

Please note that I do not want to use RIGHT() to strip the leading zeros since I am egotistical enough to believe that this code will still be in use when we reach case 10,000 :-)

Answer 1

It can be done by VALUE function of visualforce:

<apex:outputText value="{!VALUE(case.CaseNumber)}" />