The inches and feet symbol are only part of
the complete resultset that I need to get. What I decided to do was
to keep the Binary search as I have it set up and get results that
way. If the search doesn't find a value then I run through the list
of objects found in the result set one at a time. Because of the
sorting differences the binary search finds the proper value about
90% of the time, so the extra time searching after the fact does not
add alot.

I like your idea though, and may try it out down the road if this
project turns into something more. It would require writing a method
to sort  the values  after I get them from SQL rather than letting SQL
sort them up front.