# Assign values to strings for sorting
**URL:** https://community.riskscape.org.nz/t/assign-values-to-strings-for-sorting/213
**Category:** Community
**Created:** [10 March 2025 00:18 UTC](https://community.riskscape.org.nz/t/assign-values-to-strings-for-sorting/213 "2025-03-10T00:18:02Z")
**Posts on this page:** 2
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@JPowell](https://community.riskscape.org.nz/u/JPowell)
#### Post date: [10 March 2025 00:18 UTC](https://community.riskscape.org.nz/t/assign-values-to-strings-for-sorting/213/1 "2025-03-10T00:18:02Z")
I have an attribute showing the damage to parts of a building using text and I would like to be able to group by the building and get the maximum damage level for any part of the building.
The ordering of the damage levels is
`['none','low','moderate','significant','extreme'] `
so I would like
```auto
riskscape expression eval "max(['moderate','significant','extreme','low'])
```
to return ‘extreme’, but currently it returns ‘low’.
Is this possible or do I need to convert the damage levels to integers and then back to strings after grouping?
---
### Author:  [@timbeale](https://community.riskscape.org.nz/u/timbeale)
#### Post date: [10 March 2025 03:37 UTC](https://community.riskscape.org.nz/t/assign-values-to-strings-for-sorting/213/2 "2025-03-10T03:37:51Z")
Hi John,
Good question. Using `max()` to with string inputs like that isn’t something that is commonly done in RiskScape, and there is actually a bug in our backlog for it not working correctly (ticket #871). So my advice would be to work in integers and then convert them back to strings later.
Cheers,
Tim